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LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE 

GREATER ENGLISH POETS 

OF THE 

NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Studies of Keats, Shelley, Byron, Cole- 
ridge, Wordsworth, Landor, Brown- 
ing, Tennyson, Arnold, Rossetti, 
Morris, and Swinburne. Their out- 
look on life rather than their strictly liter- 
ary achievement is kept mainly in view. 
Many selections are included. $2.00 net. 

Fair-minded and dignified. These essays 
are among the most interesting of their 
kind. Singularly sound and helpful. 

— Providence Journal. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 





/^~^y^ A./V.r^ /<frv 



Biograpljto of ilea&mg Americans? 

Edited by W. P. Trent 



LEADING AMERICAN 
ESSAYISTS 



BY 

WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE, LL. D. 



WITH FOUR PORTRAITS 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1910 



T3 



Copyright, 1910, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



Published April, 1910 



T. MOREY & SON 
ELECTROTYPERS & PRINTERS, GREENFIELD, MASS. 



©CI.A261937 



TO 

E. G. S. 

WITH THE FRIENDSHIP OF MANY YEARS 
PAST AND TO COME 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

In the preparation of the present volume, the 
author has relied almost wholly upon the work of 
his predecessors. The accounts of Irving, Emerson, 
Thoreau, and Curtis, in the "American Men of 
Letters " series, written respectively by Charles 
Dudley Warner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Frank B. 
Sanborn, and Edward Cary, have been found of 
constant use. In the cases of Irving and Emerson, 
what may be called the "official" biographies, — the 
"Life and Letters of Washington Irving," by Pierre 
M. Irving, and the "Memoirs of Ralph Waldo 
Emerson," by James Elliot Cabot — have provided 
the chief part of the material. On the subject of 
Emerson, further help has been obtained from the 
recently published " Journals " of his early life, 
the Carlyle-Emerson correspondence, and the brief 
biographies by George Willis Cooke, Richard Gar- 
nett, George Edward Woodberry, and Frank B. San- 
born. In the case of Thoreau, further help has 
been obtained from Mrs. Annie Russell Marble's 
"Thoreau: His Home, Friends, and Books" and 
Henry S. Salt's sketch in the "Great Writers" series. 



viii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

In the case of Curtis, the biography by Edward 
Cary, mentioned above, has supplied most of the 
facts, although a word should be said for the useful- 
ness of the Dwight-Curtis correspondence, the Nor- 
ton edition of the orations, and the commemorative 
addresses by Parke Godwin, William Winter, and 
John W. Chadwick. The facts given in the Intro- 
duction have been compiled from a great variety of 
sources. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Bibliographical Note vii 

Introduction 3 

Washington Irving 43 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 135 

Henry David Thoreau 241 

George William Curtis 317 



IX 



PORTRAITS 

FACING PAGE 

Washington Irving, frontispiece Title 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 135 

Henry David Thoreau 241 

George William Curtis 317 



XI 



LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 



INTRODUCTION 

The English essay is a literary species not easily 
defined. The term has been applied even in modern 
times to productions as far apart as the " Essays of 
Elia" and the " Essay on Population." Between 
these extremes come countless writings, ranging 
from the solemnity of the " Essays and Reviews" to 
the light-heartedness, not to say the frivolity, of 
"The New Republic." These contrasting examples 
from English literature may be matched on the 
American side of the Atlantic by naming Horace 
Greeley's "Essays on American Farming" with 
Donald Mitchell's "Reveries of a Bachelor," the 
"Essays" of Count Rumford with Irving's "Sketch- 
Book," and the miscellaneous writings of the elder 
Henry James with those of the younger. 

We may, however, omit from the reckoning with- 
out any serious question both the Reverend Mr. 
Malthus and the contributors to the "Essays and 
Reviews," both the American pioneer of physical 
science and the American journalist, together with 
the authors of many other writings that are styled 
"essays" rather by accident than of set purpose. 
There will remain, after all such eliminations, a 

3 



4 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

sufficiently diversified body of productions, which 
may be described as occupying a sort of literary 
limbo between the creative forms of poem, play, and 
novel, on the one hand, and the more substantial 
embodiments of knowledge or of speculative thought, 
on the other. To this category we may assign all 
the short prose compositions (and some of the longer 
ones) that exhibit the mark of style, that give pleas- 
ure by virtue of the form of their expression irre- 
spective of its context (although that context may 
possess intrinsic value), and that have, in conse- 
quence, a clearly recognized place in the history of 
literature. Our definition must be classic enough to 
include almost all prose that is not cast in the mold 
of fiction or the drama, and that does not find a place 
in the solid literature of some special subject, as 
history, science, politics, or theology. 

Surveying the field of American literature with 
this definition for a divining-rod, we find little to 
deflect the magic wand until we approach the region 
of the nineteenth century. The causes that left the 
two preceding centuries of our literary annals barren 
of belles-lettres in the narrower sense operated also 
to discourage all prose writing that was not heavily 
weighted with didactic purpose, and too bluntly 
put to have the saving quality of charm. There is 
much matter of interest in our colonial prose, but 
whatever savor of style it may at times possess is 



INTRODUCTION 5 

rather the result of naivete than of conscious art. 
A readable collection of excerpts from the prose 
writers between the Jamestown settlement and the 
Revolutionary struggle may easily be put together, 
but the whole period yields no writer who is now 
read, save in illustrative snippets, for strictly literary 
satisfaction. The prodigious Cotton Mather and 
the keen Jonathan Edwards are nobody's favorite 
authors nowadays, while the polemic of lesser theolo- 
gians and political pamphleteers is now as dead as 
the passions which it once aroused. 

The American essay, then, finds no representa- 
tives in this earlier period. The word is frequently 
used, as in the " Essays" of John Witherspoon 
and Pelatiah Webster, but the compositions thus de- 
scribed are wolves in sheep's clothing. The essay 
of English literature, in the classical eighteenth- 
century form given it by a succession of writers from 
Addison to Johnson, had run its course, and become 
embalmed in the collection of " British Essayists," 
before its first feeble imitations were produced in 
America. This fact is in general accordance with 
the most characteristic feature of the development of 
American literature. From its beginnings until well 
along in the nineteenth century, our literature was 
constantly harking back to the English models of 
an earlier generation, and giving a new lease of life 
to forms and manners of expression that the parent 



6 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

country had outgrown. This thesis, which has been 
elaborately discussed by Professor Barrett Wendell, 
is of primary importance for the comprehension of 
American literary history. Just as our writers of 
the seventeenth century were belated Elizabethans, 
so our budding essayists of the later eighteenth 
century were survivals from the period of Queen 
Anne and the early Georges. 

Benjamin Franklin (i 706-1 790) is the only Ameri- 
can writer of the eighteenth century who has a 
charm for modern readers, and his " Autobiography" 
is still secure in its claim upon our interest. Frank- 
lin may also be reckoned the first of American essay- 
ists, by virtue of the "Poor Richard Sayings" the 
"Bagatelles," and many brief sketches published 
in newspapers and other ephemeral prints. For the 
purpose of the present series of biographies, he is 
otherwise classified, and a full account of his life is 
given in another volume. 

Francis Hopkinson (1 737-1 791) was born in 
Philadelphia, held several important public offices, 
was a member of the Continental Congress, and one 
of the first judges appointed by Washington under 
the Federal Constitution. He was a man of many 
accomplishments, musician, painter, and writer, 
and member of numerous learned societies. His 
"Miscellaneous and Occasional Writings," collected 
in three volumes and published the year after his 



INTRODUCTION 7 

death, include a number of essays in the Addisonian 
manner. 

John Trumbull (1 750-1831) was one of the group 
of writers known as the "Hartford Wits." He was 
a precocious youth, and it is said that he passed the 
Yale entrance examinations at the age of seven. He 
did not enter college, however, until he was thirteen, 
by which time he had anticipated a larger part of 
the course, and could devote a part of his energy to 
other matters. While still at Yale, and working for 
the master's degree, he planned a series of essays on 
the "Spectator" model, and wrote most of them him- 
self, although Timothy Dwight contributed a few. 
This series was called "The Medler," and was pub- 
lished in 1769; it was followed by a second series 
called "The Correspondent." Trumbull was the only 
member of the group to be considered as an essayist, 
and he, after these early years, turned to satirical 
verse, joining Dwight and Barlow in the composition 
of turgid poems. 

Washington Irving (1 783-1859) was the first of 
American essayists to achieve wide-spread and last- 
ing fame, and the story of his life is told at length 
elsewhere in the present volume. This seems to be 
the proper place for a few words about his associate, 
James Kirke Paulding (1 779-1860), who was a 
prolific writer, and is faintly remembered, although 
hardly read, in these later years. He was the joint 



8 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

author, with Irving, of the twenty numbers that 
made up the first series of " Salmagundi" (1807), 
and the sole author of the second series (18 19). In 
the interval, he had written some amusing satires 
upon the War of 181 2, the most important of them 
being "The Diverting History of John Bull and 
Brother Jonathan," besides "Letters from the 
South" and "The Backwoodsman." He wrote 
voluminously for over forty years, becoming in 
turn satirical poet, novelist, biographer, and politi- 
cal controversialist. He figured in public life as a 
member of Van Buren's Cabinet. His place in 
literature was that of the useful pioneer who pre- 
pares the way for men of more brilliant talents. 

Richard Henry Dana (1 787-1879), poet, story- 
writer, and essayist, was one of the founders of 
"The North American Review," and wrote "The 
Idle Man," a serial miscellany which ran for six 
numbers. Here we may find an essay on "Kean's 
Acting," which is perhaps the most important early 
American example of dramatic criticism. His con- 
tributions to the "Review" were numerous, and in- 
clude studies of several English poets, which establish 
his position as one of the pioneers of serious literary 
criticism in this country. 

The serial publication of the "Spectator" type, 
designed as a vehicle for the ideas and fancies of 
some individual writer, had a long and flourish- 



INTRODUCTION 9 

ing career in eighteenth-century England, and, as 
we have seen, was revived in America upon sev- 
eral occasions, the most notable example being the 
"Salmagundi" of Irving and Paulding. In more 
sporadic fashion, the pamphlet, in both countries, 
long served a similar purpose and supplied a similar 
need. After the decline of the individual medium of 
miscellaneous literary expression, the Annual became 
a favorite form of publication, and flourished for 
many years in England and America alike. A typ- 
ical example in this country was "The Talisman" 
(1 828-1 830), which numbered Bryant and Verplanck 
among its contributors. We now see this to have 
been a transitional form, linking the earlier individ- 
ual publication with the later magazine. In the 
magazine became merged the pamphlet, and the 
individual essay-periodical, and the annual mis- 
cellany of many hands, and the new vehicle, once 
established in favor, put the older ones out of the 
running. The magazine provided literary aspirants 
of all sorts with the opportunity to prove their qual- 
ity; la carrier e ouverte aux talens was the underlying 
principle of its vitality. Great numbers of maga- 
zines were started in this country in the early years 
of the nineteenth century; most of them drew a 
feeble breath of life for a year or two, and then died 
a natural death, but a few survived, and became 
important influences in our literary development. 



io LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

The opportunity that they gave the essayist is appar- 
ent; he was the reason of their being in those early 
years, and he has ever since flourished by their grace, 
although crowded to the wall in these later years by 
the picture, the short story, and the book published 
on the instalment plan. 

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806- 1867) was so 
important a figure in his own day that he calls for 
rather extended consideration in any account of the 
American essay, although he is now little more than 
a shadow in the general literary consciousness. His 
career matched Irving's in some respects, particu- 
larly in that of European experience and vogue, and 
he almost vied with the older writer in popularity. 
Born in Portland, and graduated from Yale in 1827, 
he entered active life with a reputation for brilliancy 
that already made him a man of mark in far wider 
circles than those of the college. He had taken 
many prizes both in and out of school, and was a 
welcome contributor to numerous newspapers and 
magazines and annuals. A volume of his poems 
was published the very year that he left college, 
and went to Boston to make his way in journalism 
and literature. He lived in Boston four years, scrib- 
bled industriously, published a second volume of 
poems, and started "The American Monthly Maga- 
zine" of which he wrote a large share of the contents. 
The magazine failed after about two years of lively 



INTRODUCTION n 

existence, leaving Willis in debt. It was nominally 
merged in the "New York Mirror," a weekly paper, 
and Willis was engaged as associate editor. The 
connection thus formed lasted, although the name 
of the paper was changed several times, for the re- 
mainder of Willis's life. 

The first enterprise of his New York associates 
was to scrape together a purse, and send Willis to 
Europe as a roving correspondent for the "Mirror." 
He was to support himself while abroad by weekly 
letters at ten dollars each. He sailed in October, 
1 83 1, and did not return until May, 1836. No such 
stay as this had been contemplated, but he made 
such good use of his opportunities, and the oppor- 
tunities were themselves so extraordinary, that the 
five years proved highly profitable for him, both 
financially and in reputation. He was very fortu- 
nate in his introductions, and was passed on from 
country to country with new letters, making every- 
where new friends. He spent a long time in France 
and Italy, then took a six months' cruise on the 
Mediterranean and to the Levant, then went to 
England for a couple of years. He was a general 
favorite wherever he went, and came into personal 
relations with many of the most famous men and 
women of the time. In his correspondence he wrote 
rather too freely about his new acquaintances, and 
when his letters were unexpectedly reproduced in the 



12 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

English prints, they got him into hot water. In two 
cases, he nearly had duels on his hands, one of them 
with the redoubtable Captain Marryatt. Miss Mit- 
ford's description of him as " a very elegant young 
man, more like one of the best of our peers' sons 
than a rough republican" gives some notion of the 
impression he made socially. In 1835, he married 
an English girl, and a few months later brought his 
bride to the new world. His descriptive letters to 
the " Mirror," most of them under the heading of 
"Pencillings by the Way," were 139 in number. 
They were issued, in part, by an English publisher 
in book form. In England also were published, 
during the author's sojourn, a new volume of his 
poems, and three volumes of " Inklings of Adven- 
ture." These books brought good returns, and 
Willis was also in considerable demand as a con- 
tributor to English periodicals. 

The reputation thus made at thirty stood him in 
good stead upon his return home, and for many 
years thereafter. In 1837, he went to the country 
to live, establishing a home, Glenmary, on the 
banks of Owego Creek. Here he remained five 
years, except for 1 839-1 840, when he made a second 
visit to Europe. During these years he wrote several 
plays, which had a moderate success in both Eng- 
land and America. The year 1 839-1 840 was also 
marked by a new journalistic venture, "The Cor- 



INTRODUCTION 13 

sair," which was distinguished by having Thackeray 
for a contributor. Its title was the symbol of its 
practical intent, for it frankly pilfered from current 
English literature, its editor thinking this to be a 
good way of working for international copyright. 
Three pieces of hack-work, descriptive of American, 
Canadian, and Irish scenery, belong to this period, 
as does also "A l'Abri," also known as " Letters 
from under a Bridge," which is perhaps the author's 
most charming work. In 1842, the Glenmary home 
was sold, and Willis spent the next decade in New 
York, making a third European journey in 1845. 
In this year also his wife died, and his second mar- 
riage took place a year after. In 1846, the journal 
with which he had long been connected underwent its 
final transformation, and became the "Home Jour- 
nal," under which title Willis shared in its editor- 
ship for the rest of his life. In 1852, he again made 
a country home, this time on the Hudson, naming 
the place Idlewild. In 1857, he published "Paul 
Fane," his only novel, a poor thing, but his only 
book that was all of one piece. Most of his prose 
books were patched together out of his journalistic 
writings. More than a dozen titles might be named, 
besides those already given. He died in 1867, on 
his sixty-first birthday. The familiar lines in Lowell's 
"Fable for Critics" sum up with kindly accuracy 
his characteristics as an essayist. 



14 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

"His prose had a natural grace of its own, 
And enough of it, too, if he'd let it alone, 
But he twitches and jerks so one fairly gets tired, 
And is forced to forgive where he might have admired. 
Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced 
It runs like a stream with a musical waste, 
And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep. 
'Tis not deep as a river, but who'd have it deep?" 

George Henry Calvert (1803-1889), although a 
southerner by extraction, being a descendant of 
the founders of Maryland, belongs rather with the 
New England group of writers by virtue of his 
residence in Newport for the last forty-five years of 
his life. He was one of the American pioneers in 
the study of German literature, and an interpreter 
of Goethe and Schiller. He has over thirty volumes 
to his credit, and about half of them are classifiable 
as examples of essay-writing. He wrote all his life, 
exhibiting a pedestrian talent, but making no very 
marked impression. 

Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1813-1871), a writer 
now almost forgotten, but with a considerable fol- 
lowing in his day, was born in Boston, and spent 
his later years in New York. He published books 
of essays, to the number of a dozen or more, their 
contents including literary criticism, sketches of 
travel, and musings upon life. A graceful writer, 
rather than a forceful one, he contributed his rivu- 
let to the stream of culture, and was known as a 



INTRODUCTION 15 

sympathetic interpreter of life and art and litera- 
ture. 

The Concord group of philosophers and writers 
gave us in Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 -188 2) an d 
Henry David Thoreau (181 7-1863) two of the great- 
est of American essayists. They are dealt with else- 
where in this volume, but the fact that they over- 
shadow their associates should not prevent us from 
being mindful of the very respectable merits of Al- 
cott and Ripley, of Ellery Channing and Margaret 
Fuller. 

Amos Bronson Alcott (1 799-1888) was born on 
a farm, had little schooling, worked as a boy in a 
clock factory, and traveled for some years as a 
peddler and book agent. Teaching was his real 
aim, and he found himself in charge of a Connecti- 
cut country school in 1826. Eight years later, he 
established a school of his own in Boston, and was 
for a time successful. But his educational ideas 
were too advanced, and his method too unconven- 
tional, to make the success lasting, and some five 
years later he removed with his family to Concord. 
Here his eccentricities of thought and action found 
a more congenial environment, and he became an 
oracle in the little group of transcendentalists. His 
thoughts were turned toward community life, but 
Brook Farm was not idealistic enough to suit him, 
and he set up a venture of his own, naming it Fruit- 



1 6 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

lands. This did not last long, and its disheartened 
founder was thrown back upon philosophizing. 
His philosophy found expression more in speech 
than in writing, and for many years he traveled 
about, conducting " conversations" in small groups 
of the elect. His mode of thought was so abstract 
that he became the butt of humorists, and even his 
friends looked askance at his "Orphic Sayings," as 
they weighted the pages of "The Dial." In 1879, 
the establishment of the Concord Summer School 
of Philosophy and Literature crowned the life-work 
of the octogenarian sage. His reputation as an 
essayist rests upon a scant sheaf of writings, — his 
contributions to "The Dial," his "Tablets" (1868), 
his "Concord Days" (1872), and his "Table Talk" 
(1877). These but imperfectly represent the man, 
and our sense of his importance rests rather upon the 
record of his career as we find it in the tributes paid 
him by Emerson and his other Concord associates. 

George Ripley (1 802-1 880) is an American essay- 
ist who has left no book worth mentioning to per- 
petuate his memory. His writings were all fugitive, 
although he at one time contemplated bringing the 
best of them together in two volumes to be en- 
titled "Books and Men." Yet those writings were 
so considerable, and so influential in their day, that 
their author cannot possibly be omitted from even 
so cursory a sketch as the present. He was gradu- 



INTRODUCTION 17 

ated from Harvard, studied for the ministry, and 
for a time preached in a Unitarian pulpit. He 
traveled abroad, acquainted himself with French 
and German literature, and made many transla- 
tions. Removing to Concord, he became the founder 
of Brook Farm, and supplied the practical sagacity 
which kept "The Dial" afloat for its four years on 
perilous seas. In 1849, he went to New York upon 
Greeley's invitation, and became literary editor of 
the "Tribune." In those columns he wrote volumi- 
nously for over thirty years, besides doing outside 
literary work, and editing the "New American 
Cyclopaedia" jointly with Charles A. Dana. Dur- 
ing his earlier years, he was thought by many to be 
the chief among our critics of literature, a judgment 
which would not now be approved, although a gen- 
erous tribute to his industry, his kindliness, his ele- 
vation of thought, and his zeal for intellectual good, 
is richly deserved. 

William Ellery Channing (1818-1901), a nephew 
of the great Unitarian divine, himself an essayist, was 
a desultory writer who made his home at Concord 
in 1842, married a sister of Margaret Fuller, was the 
friend of Emerson and the companion of Thoreau, 
a contributor to "The Dial," and a poet of consider- 
able note. His contribution to the literature of the 
essay is comprised chiefly in two volumes, "Con- 
versations in Rome between an Artist, a Catholic, 



18 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

and a Critic" (1847), and "Thoreau, the Poet- 
Naturalist" (1873). Several of the famous writers 
of the Concord group lived to a venerable age, but 
Channing was the only one of them to draw breath 
in the twentieth century. 

Sarah Margaret Fuller (18 10-1850) was born at 
Cambridge, and was the victim of a strenuous edu- 
cational regimen. Her father was an opinionated 
person of some political consequence, and Margaret, 
the oldest of his eight children, was subjected to a 
forcing process which started her in Latin at six, 
and made her in early girlhood a prodigy of learning. 
Colonel Higginson thus describes what was for her a 
typical day at the age of fifteen. " She rose before 
five in the summer, walked an hour, practiced an 
hour on the piano, breakfasted at seven, read Sis- 
mondi's ' European Literature ' in French till eight, 
then Brown's ' Philosophy ' till half past nine, then 
went to school for Greek at twelve, then practiced 
again till dinner. After the early dinner she read 
two hours in Italian, then walked or rode, and in 
the evening played, sang, and retired at eleven to 
write in her diary." It was an abnormal life, yet 
it did not altogether exclude the natural interests 
of childhood. But it accounts for such a passage as 
the following, from the diary of her twenty-third 
year. "All youthful hopes of every kind, I have 
pushed from my thoughts. I will not, if I can help 



INTRODUCTION 19 

it, lose an hour in castle-building and repining — 
too much of that already. I have now a pursuit of 
immediate importance : to the German language and 
literature I will give my undivided attention. . . . 
please God now to keep my mind composed, that 
I may store it with all that may be hereafter con- 
ducive to the best good of others." 

In 1833, the family removed to Groton, a country 
town forty miles from Boston, where Margaret spent 
the next three years. They were no less busy than 
the earlier ones, for she had many household duties, 
including " teaching little Fullers," and the care of 
the family sewing. But she found time to read also, 
and went on with her Kant and Goethe, her theology 
and architecture and history and astronomy. She 
translated Goethe's "Tasso," and made her first 
appearance in print by publishing a defense of 
Brutus, written in reply to an article by George 
Bancroft. The death of her father in 1835 left the 
family poorly provided for; the plan of a European 
trip was abandoned, and Margaret turned to teach- 
ing. She began with Alcott's school in Boston, 
giving also lessons in foreign languages to private 
classes. Then after a few months she went to 
Providence, taking a post in an academy, and occupy- 
ing it for about two years. When she left Provi- 
dence she ended her school-teaching, although she 
continued to take private pupils from time to time. 



20 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

The family removed from Groton to Jamaica 
Plain, a Boston suburb, in 1839, remaining there for 
three years. The two years following (1842-1844) 
were spent in Cambridge. The five years thus ac- 
counted for were the period of the " conversations " 
which figure so prominently in Miss Fuller's life. 
These were weekly gatherings, attended by twenty 
or thirty women, for the discussion of such serious 
subjects as literature, art, ethics, education, religion, 
and the function of womanhood in the social econ- 
omy. Miss Fuller took the lead, a few venturous 
spirits seconded her efforts, and the others kept to 
the passive part of listeners. Her method, says 
Colonel Higginson, "was to begin each subject with 
a short introduction, giving the outline of the sub- 
ject, and suggesting the most effective points of 
view. This done, she invited questions or criticisms: 
if these lagged, she put questions herself, using 
persuasion for the timid, kindly raillery for the 
indifferent. There was always a theme, and a 
thread." Many voices have borne witness to the 
tonic influence of these discussions upon those who 
took part in them; on the other hand, outsiders 
poked a little fun at them, and one critic, Miss 
Harriet Martineau, then visiting America, treated 
them with undeserved contempt, saying that they 
"were spoiling a set of well-meaning women in a 
pitiable way." Miss Martineau's grievance was 



INTRODUCTION 21 

that any set of intelligent persons should discuss 
questions of abstract thought at a time when "the 
liberties of the republic were running out as fast 
as they could go, at a breach which another sort of 
elect persons were devoting themselves to repair.' ' 
In other words, the "conversations" were to be con- 
demned because they did not take for their sole 
topic the evil of slavery. Some people can never 
be made to understand that the cause of spiritual 
freedom is every whit as holy as the cause of bodily 
freedom. 

Miss Fuller first made Emerson's acquaintance 
when she visited him at Concord in 1836. From 
that time on, her relations with the transcendental- 
ists were continuous and intimate. The so-called 
Transcendental Club took shape in the fall of 1836, 
and Miss Fuller was one of its early members. It 
was a peripatetic club, meeting, as occasion offered, 
at Cambridge, Watertown, Boston, and Concord. 
In 1839, the project of a special organ for its views, 
bruited for some time, took definite shape, and the 
following year "The Dial" entered upon its four 
years' term of precarious life. Miss Fuller was the 
editor, and for the next two years gave her almost 
undivided attention to the work, drumming up con- 
tributions, toning down extravagances of expres- 
sion, and, when matter fell short, herself filling out 
the contents. It was a wild team that she sought 



22 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

to drive, and there was much pulling in different 
directions at the same time. Alcott wished to be 
more " Orphic" than was wise, and Theodore 
Parker wished to be more outspoken than was 
prudent. These conflicting forces she controlled 
with unexpected firmness, worked almost to the 
point of exhaustion, and finally, in 1842, was com- 
pelled to give it up. It looked as though "The 
Dial" must then disappear, but a new rally was 
made to its support. Emerson undertook the editor- 
ship, and it was given a second two years' lease of 
life. 

An account of Margaret Fuller has to make some 
mention of Brook Farm, if only to correct a misap- 
prehension. The character of Zenobia, in Haw- 
thorne's "Blithedale Romance," is so generally taken 
to be a portrait of Miss Fuller that it becomes nec- 
essary to state, as Colonel Higginson puts it, that 
she "had neither the superb beauty of Zenobia, nor 
her physical amplitude, nor her large fortune, nor 
her mysterious husband, nor her inclination to sui- 
cide; nor, in fine, was she a member of the Brook 
Farm Community at all." But she numbered many 
warm friends among its members, and was a frequent 
visitor to the Farm, joining in its merrymakings and 
sharing in its aspirations. 

In the summer of 1843, Miss Fuller took her 
first long journey, spending nearly four months in 



INTRODUCTION 23 

what was then "the far West," and is now merely 
the country surrounding the second largest city in 
the United States. Returning from this outing, she 
prepared for the press the book named "Summer 
on the Lakes," her first original work. Before this, 
she had published in book form only two volumes of 
translation from the German — Eckermann's "Con- 
versations with Goethe" and a fragment of Bet- 
tina's correspondence. A small book on "Woman 
in the Nineteenth Century" followed in 1844, and 
the whole edition was sold out in a week, much 
to her delight. Toward the close of that year, she 
went to New York to live, at the instance of Horace 
Greeley, who had invited her to join forces with the 
"Tribune." For a time she was an inmate of the 
Greeley household. Her work with the "Tribune" 
consisted partly of literary criticism, and partly of 
a series of social studies, analyzing the causes of 
poverty and crime in the great city, and examining 
its penal and charitable institutions. Her literary 
criticism set a higher standard than had previously 
been known in our journalism, substituted objective 
judgments for the personalities then in vogue, and 
introduced a new note of urbanity, and even of 
cosmopolitanism. Its faults were a deadly serious- 
ness unenlivened by any gleam of humor, and a 
stilted and inorganic style. A work entitled "Papers 
on Literature and Art," in two slender volumes, was 



24 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

published in 1846, and reproduced the best work of 
her two years' sojourn in New York. 

The last chapter of Miss Fuller's life is that which 
recounts her four years of life abroad, their joys, 
their vicissitudes, and their tragic ending. She 
sailed for England late in the summer of 1846, spent 
some time in Scotland, the north of England, and 
London, met Wordsworth and Mazzini, went to 
Paris and met Beranger and George Sand, pro- 
ceeded to Italy early in 1847, and took up a residence 
in Rome. Toward the end of that year, she was 
married to the Marchese Ossoli, and the year follow- 
ing gave birth to a boy. This phase of her life is a 
little obscure, the marriage being secret, on account 
of her husband's relations to his family. He was a 
disciple of Mazzini, while his relatives were iden- 
tified with the party of reaction and papal tyr- 
anny. The facts of essential importance are that 
she was an eye-witness of the short-lived Roman 
Republic and the Triumvirate of Mazzini, that she 
experienced the hardships of the siege and took an 
active part in the work of the hospitals, and that 
when the French forced their entrance into the capi- 
tal, in the summer of 1849, sne ^d with her husband 
to the village in the Abruzzi where their child had 
been left in safe-keeping. Those experiences im- 
pelled her to write a book on the brief history of the 
Roman Republic, but the manuscript went down 



INTRODUCTION 25 

with her at sea. During the following winter season, 
the exiles lived in Florence, and in the spring of 
1850 decided upon a journey to America. They 
embarked on a merchant vessel from Leghorn, had 
an eventful voyage of two months, and on the morn- 
ing of July 19, 1850, were shipwrecked on the 
beach of Fire Island, perishing in the very sight of 
home and safety. Thus ended the career of the 
first woman to take a high place among American 
writers, and to be considered without the need of 
making any allowance for sex. The four volumes 
of her collected works, published five years after 
her death, are of no very vital interest to us now, 
but they constitute a landmark in the history of our 
literature. In a certain elastic sense, Margaret Fuller 
was at once our Mrs. Browning and our Madame 
de Stael. 

In this sketch of the American essay, the part 
played by the Concord group of writers is now 
nearly done with, but we must remain long enough 
in the neighborhood to outline the lives of a number 
of men whose associations are chiefly with Boston 
and Cambridge. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
(1807-1882), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), 
and James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) are American 
essayists of the first importance, but they are also 
poets of even more importance, and their biographies 
find a place elsewhere in this series. Similarly, 



26 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) should probably, 
by virtue of his profession, be given a place among 
the theologians, although he deserves a better name. 
After these exclusions, there remain for brief men- 
tion in the present connection three men of consider- 
able importance. 

Edwin Percy Whipple (18 19-1886) was more 
completely a literary critic (and consequently an 
essayist) by profession than any American writer 
who preceded him. He was a Bostonian of little 
schooling, and the occupation of his early manhood 
was that of a banker's clerk. But he educated 
himself by wide reading, and at the age of twenty- 
four attracted attention by an essay on Macaulay. 
From that time on, he devoted himself mainly to 
writing and lecturing. He was a Lyceum favorite, 
and addressed many hundreds of audiences all over 
the country. For forty years he thus filled a place 
in the public eye, and the more important of his 
lectures, published in a series of nine volumes, gave 
him an equally wide constituency of readers. Some 
of the titles and dates are as follows: " Essays and 
Reviews" (1848), " Literature and Life" (1849), 
" Literature of the Life of Elizabeth" (1869), " Suc- 
cess and Its Conditions" (187 1), and two posthu- 
mous volumes, "American Literature, and Other 
Papers" (1887), and " Outlooks on Society, Litera- 
ture, and Politics" (1888). He was an earnest and 



INTRODUCTION 27 

polished writer, conventional in his judgments, and 
given to emphasis of the ethical aspect of whatever 
subject he might have under discussion. Lacking in 
both prescience and the deeper insight, his once con- 
siderable influence has so waned that it may now be 
said hardly to exist. 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823 — ) the "last 
leaf" on the tree which symbolizes the golden liter- 
ary age of Cambridge and Boston, has had a varied 
career as clergyman, soldier, and man of letters. 
He was born in Cambridge, and graduated from 
Harvard. He served as pastor to several Unitarian 
churches, was active as an abolitionist, and enlisted 
in the Civil War with the Massachusetts volunteers. 
Later he was in command of a South Carolina regi- 
ment of colored troops, and his experiences are de- 
scribed as his "Army Life in a Black Regiment.' ' 
From the close of the war onward he devoted mainly 
to literary work his long and busy life. He has been 
historian, biographer, translator, poet, and even (in 
the single case of "Malbone") novelist. The books 
which place him in the category of American essay- 
ists include "Out-Door Papers (1863), "Atlantic Es- 
says" (187 1), "OldportDays" (1873), " Short Studies 
of American Authors" (1879), "Women and Men" 
(1887), "Travellers and Outlaws" (1888), "Con- 
cerning All of Us" (1892), "Cheerful Yesterdays" 
(1898), and "Contemporaries" (1899). A rich and 



28 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

stimulating writer, with a vigorous style which some- 
times becomes tart when he grows controversial or 
forces the American note, he has a high place among 
our writers of prose, and a secure place in our af- 
fections. 

Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908) was born in 
Cambridge, lived there practically all his life, and 
died in the house in which he was born. After his 
graduation from Harvard, he went into business 
life for a few years, and in the capacity of supercargo, 
made a long voyage to the East, returning by way 
of Europe. In 1853 he published a volume of " Con- 
siderations of Some Recent Social Theories.' 7 More 
European travel followed, devoted mainly to the 
study of art, and bearing fruit on his return in " Notes 
of Travel and Study in Italy" and an essay on 
Dante. He was active in the founding of "The 
Atlantic Monthly/' and joined with Lowell during 
the Civil War in editing "The North American 
Review." He was also an influential factor in the 
establishment of "The Nation." When the war 
was over, and its chief problems on the way to set- 
tlement, he spent five more years in Europe. Soon 
after his return, he was made professor of the his- 
tory of art at Harvard, and filled the chair from 1875 
to 1898, when an emeritus title was bestowed upon 
him. He was happy in his literary friendships with 
the greatest writers of his time, and served after 



INTRODUCTION 29 

their death, as editor of their correspondence, such 
men as Ruskin and Carlyle, Lowell and Curtis. 
His most important literary work, aside from his 
prose translation of Dante, was done in this capacity, 
and as a writer for periodicals, or a contributor of 
introductions to other men's books. This studied 
self-effacement makes the books that bear his name 
but poorly representative of the work that he did 
or of the influence that he exerted. His scattered 
writings, and those still in manuscript, would, if 
brought suitably together, greatly enhance his 
reputation as an essayist to outward showing. He 
was one of the wisest and sanest of our commenta- 
tors upon literature and art, upon society and poli- 
tics, and the contagion of his spirit touched to fine 
issues unnumbered men and women of the younger 
generation. 

One of the closest of Norton's associates, both in 
literary sympathy, and in the struggle for high civic 
standards, was George William Curtis (1824-1892), 
whose biography appears elsewhere in the present 
volume. This mention of his name may serve us in 
making the transition from New England to New 
York, going by way of Connecticut in order to con- 
sider two writers who made their homes in that State. 

Donald Grant Mitchell (1822-1909), dear to the 
youth of the middle nineteenth century, and still a 
favorite with readers in the sentimental stage of de- 



30 LEADING AMEPvICAN ESSAYISTS 

velopment, claims a place among American essay- 
ists as the "Ik Marvel" who wrote "Reveries of a 
Bachelor" (1850) and "Dream Life" (1851). He 
wrote other books, some before, and many after, 
but those two are the only ones that retain their 
hold upon the public, with the possible exception of 
" My Farm of Edge wood." Mitchell was a Yale 
graduate, and lived a roving life for several years, 
spending much time abroad, and serving for a short 
period as United States consul at Venice. In 1855, 
he purchased the farm just outside of New Haven 
which was his home for the remaining years — more 
than half a century — of his life. Besides the books 
already named, mention may be made of "Wet 
Days at Edgewood" (1864), "Rural Studies" 
(1867), "Bound Together" (1884), and "English 
Land, Letters, and Kings" (1889). Born early 
enough to be numbered among Irving' s friends, he 
lived long enough to find himself almost the oldest 
of old-fashioned American writers, yet a writer who 
renewed his following from generation to generation. 
Charles Dudley Warner (1 829-1 900) was a na- 
tive of Massachusetts, and afterwards described his 
early life and farm surroundings in "Being a Boy," 
which is one of our classics in its kind. At thirteen 
he removed to a New York country town, fitted for 
college, and in 1851 was graduated from Hamilton. 
Then he studied law, gave lectures, spent two years 



INTRODUCTION 31 

on the frontier (in Missouri!), was married, and 
settled in Chicago for the practice of law. In i860, 
he removed to Connecticut to become the associate 
of his friend Joseph R. Hawley in editing the Hart- 
ford " Press," afterwards the "Courant." Both the 
home and the newspaper connection were retained 
for his forty remaining years, although his activi- 
ties became greatly widened and diversified, and his 
journeyings were frequent and extensive. His first 
book was made up from his newspaper sketches, 
and entitled "My Summer in a Garden" (1870). 
It revealed the writer as an essayist of the authentic 
line, a worthy successor of Irving and fellow crafts- 
man of Curtis, with an infusion of humor quite his 
own. Warner was forty when he thus entered the 
field of literature, but the fluency of his pen soon 
made up for the lost time, and upwards of a score of 
books stand to his credit. Those which may fairly 
be ascribed to the essayist include " Saunterings " 
(1872), "Backlog Studies" (1872), "Baddeck, and 
that Sort of Thing" (1874), "In the Wilderness" 
(1878), "As We Were Saying" (1891), and "As We 
Go" (1893). In the same category, although less 
strictly, come his half-dozen books of travel in the 
old world and the new. He also wrote biographies 
of Captain John Smith and Washington Irving, col- 
laborated with his neighbor "Mark Twain" in "The 
Gilded Age," and was the author of a connected 



32 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

series of three novels concerned with the feverish 
social and business life of the metropolis. He con- 
ducted the " Editor's Drawer" in " Harper's Maga- 
zine," and edited the "American Men of Letters" 
series and "A Library of the World's Best Litera- 
ture." Besides doing all this literary and editorial 
work, he found time to engage actively in many 
civic enterprises and reforms, and made himself a 
force in the discussion of such subjects as schools, 
charities, and penal institutions. He would have 
been made the subject of a full length biographical 
portrait in the present volume had adequate materi- 
als been available ; lacking them, the foregoing sketch 
must suffice. 

We now pass to a group of essayists associated 
chiefly with the intellectual life of New York. Here 
again, as in the case of the Boston-Cambridge group, 
we find a number of writers who were poets first, 
and essayists afterwards, which precludes anything 
more than the mention of their names for the sake 
of making the record complete. These writers are 
Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Richard Henry Stod- 
dard (1825-1903), Bayard Taylor (1825-1878), 
and Edmund Clarence Stedman (1 833-1908). 

Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819-1881) was born in 
Massachusetts, and in his early years was associated 
with the Springfield "Republican." Writing under 
the name of "Timothy Titcomb," he became widely 



INTRODUCTION 33 

popular as an exponent of the domestic virtues and 
as a friendly household counselor. His "Letters to 
Young People' 5 (1858), "Gold Foil" (1859), "Les- 
sons in Life" (1861), and "Plain Talks on Familiar 
Subjects" (1865) were books that found their way 
into almost every home. In 1870, he removed to 
New York, becoming the editor of the newly-founded 
"Scribner's Monthly." Two volumes of "Every- 
Day Topics" (1876, 1882) represent his later work 
as an essayist of the commonplace. His popularity 
extended to the long poems and irreproachable 
novels that he also put forth in considerable numbers. 
Richard Grant White (1821-1885), a New Yorker 
to the manner born, occupied for many years a post 
in the public service, and devoted his leisure to 
writing books and magazine articles. He was a 
Shaksperian student of usefulness and authority 
in his day, and a stern defender of good usage in 
English speech. Dogmatic, combative, and some- 
times cynical, he offered an efficacious antidote to 
the sentimentality prevailing in popular literature. 
Aside from his studies of Shakspere, he was the au- 
thor of a humorous satire on the Civil War, entitled 
"The New Gospel of Peace according to St. Benja- 
min" (1863- 1 866), collections of essays on "Words 
and Their Uses" (1870), and "Every-Day English " 
(1880), a work on "England Without and Within" 
(1881), and "The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys" 



34 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

(1884), a novel in form, but in fact a pungent satire 
upon the American vulgarian in English society. 
White rode his several hobbies with unyielding de- 
termination, pricked many bubbles with his lance, 
and exerted a tonic influence upon American letters. 
William Winter (1836 — ), born in Massachusetts 
and educated at Harvard, drifted to New York 
in his early manhood, and became associated with 
the "Tribune" as dramatic critic, a post which he 
continued to occupy for upward of forty years. His 
early books were volumes of verse, and it was not 
until he was past forty that he found his gait as an 
essayist. A first visit to England in 1877 seems to 
have provided the needed stimulus, and was de- 
scribed in "The Trip to England" (1879). Other 
volumes of prose, always graceful, sometimes over- 
sentimental, and sometimes rising to the height of 
old-fashioned eloquence, followed in rapid succession. 
Among them are " English Rambles " (1883), " Shake- 
speare's England" (1886), "Gray Days and Gold" 
(1892), "Old Shrines and Ivy" (1892), and "Shad- 
ows of the Stage" (1892-1893). He also wrote 
memoirs of Henry Irving, Edwin Booth, Joseph 
Jefferson, and Richard Mansfield. As a writer upon 
the stage, he has distinguished himself as a cham- 
pion of the old order in things dramatic, and as the 
uncompromising foe of modernism, both in acting 
and in dramatic composition. 



INTRODUCTION 35 

John Burroughs (1837 — ) is second only to Tho- 
reau in American literature as an essayist concerned 
chiefly with the study of nature. Like Thoreau also, 
he humanizes his work with a blend of bookish 
culture and sage musings upon social welfare. He 
was born in the Catskill region of New York, went 
without a college education, taught school for a 
number of years, was a treasury clerk in Washington 
from 1864 to 1873, and for eleven years thereafter an 
examiner of national banks. In 1874, he bought a 
farm on the Hudson, at a point now known as West 
Park, named the place Riverby, built a stone house 
largely with his own hands, and went into the cultiva- 
tion of fruit. Both the residence and the occupation 
have claimed him ever since, except for his occasional 
journeyings, which have ranged from England to 
California. The following volumes make up the 
bulk of his literary output: "Wake Robin" (1871), 
"Winter Sunshine" (1875), "Birds and Poets" 
(1877), "Locusts and Wild Honey" (1879), "Pepac- 
ton" (1881), "Fresh Fields" (1884), "Signs and Sea- 
sons" (1886), "Indoor Studies" (1889), "Riverby" 
(1894), "The Light of Day" (1898), "Squirrels and 
Other Fur Bearers" (1900), and "Literary Val- 
ues." He was from the first an enthusiastic adher- 
ent of the Whitman cult ; his earliest publication was 
the "Notes on Walt Whitman" of 1867, and in 
1896 he published an extended study of the poet. 



36 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

His occasional papers on literary topics treat of the 
larger aspects of literature as related to life, and are 
anything but academic in method. These papers 
count for much less than his nature-essays, which 
are always the record of direct and minute observa- 
tion, intimate in sympathy, and loving in touch. 

Hamilton Wright Mabie (1845 — )> born in rural 
New York, was educated at Williams and Columbia. 
He first attempted the law, but did not like it, and 
was glad to accept an invitation to join the staff of 
"The Christian Union." That weekly, which many 
years ago changed its name to "The Outlook," has 
claimed Mr. Mabie's services ever since, and most 
of his essays have first appeared in its pages. "Norse 
Stories Retold from the Eddas" (1882) was his first 
book; among its many successors are "My Study 
Fire" (1890, 1894), "Under the Trees and Else- 
where" (1891), "Short Studies in Literature" (1891), 
"Essays in Literary Interpretation" (1892), "Nature 
and Culture" (1897), "Books and Culture" (1897), 
"Work and Culture" (1898), "The Life of the 
Spirit" (1899), "William Shakespeare, Poet, Drama- 
tist, and Man" (1900), "Works and Days" (1902), 
and "Parables of Life" (1902). In all these books 
he has preached the gospel of culture in a very broad 
sense, emphasizing the power and beauty of the 
great writers and the importance to the individual 
of finding in them a cherished personal possession. 



INTRODUCTION 37 

This gospel he has also spread abroad by word of 
mouth, traveling all over the country as a lecturer, 
and charming countless audiences by his graceful 
and eloquent discourse. His work as an essayist and 
public speaker in some ways suggests that of Curtis, 
although he has been much less conspicuous as a 
publicist, and the range of his interests is not as 
broad. He makes his peaceful home in Summit, 
New Jersey, as Curtis made his on Staten Island. 

As we have found it necessary to relegate the 
biographies of several of the most important Ameri- 
can essayists to the volumes which deal with the 
poets, so to the volumes which deal with the novelists 
we must leave still another group of men. Nathaniel 
Hawthorne (1804- 1864) belongs among the essayists 
by virtue of many of the sketches found in the 
volumes of his tales, and of "Our Old Home," be- 
sides the three collections of passages from his 
American and foreign note-books. William Dean 
Howe lis (1837 — ) has in preeminent degree the 
qualities that go to the making of the typical essayist, 
and his collected works include more than a dozen 
volumes of essay-writing in the strictest sense — 
sketches of travel, literary criticism, and social 
philosophy. Henry James (1843 — ) ^ s a ^ so ? although 
less voluminously, an essayist of the highest dis- 
tinction. 

As the principal writer of the South, Edgar Allan 



38 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Poe (i 809-1 849), whether he be classed primarily as 
poet or as story-teller, must also be reckoned with 
as an essayist of much esthetic significance, and a 
similar statement must be made concerning Sidney 
Lanier (1 842-1 881), the southern writer next to Poe 
in importance. Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), a 
southerner by accident, was wholly an essayist, and 
as such, calls for more extended biographical men- 
tion. He was born in the Ionian Islands, of Irish and 
Greek parentage, and lived for many years in New 
Orleans. He made his home for a time in New 
York, and then went to Japan for permanent resi- 
dence, becoming a subject of the Mikado. His books 
include " Stray Leaves from Strange Literature," 
"Some Chinese Ghosts," "Two Years in the French 
West Indies," "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan," 
"Out of the East," "Reveries and Studies in New 
Japan," "Kokoro," "Gleanings in Buddha-Fields," 
"Exotics and Retrospectives," "In Ghostly Japan," 
" Shado wings," and "A Japanese Miscellany." He 
is a unique figure in our literature, and no other 
American writer (if we may call him that) has so 
interpreted for us the very soul of the East, and 
expressed its modes of thought in such classically 
beautiful language. 

The writers thus far mentioned were all born be- 
fore the middle of the nineteenth century, which 
might well be taken as a convenient, if arbitrary, 



INTRODUCTION 39 

stopping-place for the present sketch. To make a 
selection from the throng of younger and more nearly 
contemporary essayists is an invidious task, and any 
appraisal of their work would now be too provisional 
to be worth attempting. If the time-limit of birth set 
above be extended to i860, so as to include men now 
fifty years of age and upwards, our outline-history of 
this literary species would be made to include a good 
many writers recently in the public eye. Somewhat 
at random, the following names and selected titles 
may be offered: William Crary Brownell (185 1 — ), 
author of " French Traits," " French Art," " Victo- 
rian Prose Masters," and " American Prose Mas- 
ters"; Brander Matthews (1852 — ), author of "The 
Theatres of Paris," "French Dramatists of the 
Nineteenth Century," "Pen and Ink," "American- 
isms and Briticisms," "Studies of the Stage," "As- 
pects of Fiction," "Parts of Speech," and "The 
Development of the Drama"; Henry Van Dyke 
(1852 — ), author of "The Poetry of Tennyson," 
"Little Rivers," and "Fisherman's Luck." Barrett 
Wendell (1855 — ), author of "Stelligeri and Other 
Essays Concerning America," "William Shake- 
speare," "A Literary History of America," "Liberty, 
Union, and Democracy," "The France of To-day," 
and "The Privileged Classes"; George Edward 
Woodberry (1855 — ), author of "Studies in Letters 
and Life," "Heart of Man," "Makers ofLitera- 



40 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

ture," " National Studies in American Letters," "The 
Torch," " Great Writers," and "The Appreciation 
of Literature"; Samuel McChord Crothers (1857 — ), 
author of "The Gentle Reader," "The Pardoner's 
Wallet," and " By the Christmas Fire." Henry Blake 
Fuller (1857 — ), author of "The Chevalier of Pensieri- 
Vani" and "The Chatelaine of La Trinite"; 1 Agnes 
Repplier (1859 — ), author of "Books and Men," 
"Points of View," "Essays in Miniature," "Essays 
in Idleness," "In the Dozy Hours," and "Varia"; 
and Bliss Perry (i860 — ), author of "A Study of 
Prose Fiction" and "The Amateur Spirit." Al- 
though nothing more than a select catalogue has 
now been attempted, an inspection of the above 
titles will show that some of them, at least, could 
not properly be omitted from the briefest history of 
the American essay. 

In closing this historical survey, the remark may 
be made that whatever sins of omission are charged 
against it will be found assignable to one of two 
causes. The names not mentioned are either those 
of writers whose major importance is found in some 
other field of literary activity, their work as essayists 
being relatively inconsiderable, or of writers who, 



1 At this point the writer should have included William Morton Payne 
(1858 — ), author of "Little Leaders," "Editorial Echoes," "Various 
Views," and "The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century." 
— Editor. 



INTRODUCTION 41 

although adopting the form of the essay, have made 
it the vehicle of scholarship or used it for the further- 
ance of some didactic purpose instead of aiming at 
an essentially literary effect. The essays which we 
read for the purpose of gaining specific knowledge, 
as for the purpose of shaping our judgment upon 
controverted subjects, perform a useful function in 
the intellectual economy, but their authors are not 
of the company of Montaigne and Addison and 
Emerson. Charm of diction and mellowness of 
thought are what make the essay, and these qualities 
may invest even a slender theme with the attributes 
of the most exquisite literary art. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 



The life of Washington Irving almost spans the 
interval between the American Revolution and the 
Civil War. He was born in the city of New York, 
April 3, 1783, less than two years after the British 
surrender at Yorktown, and he died November 28, 
1859, less than two years before the bombardment of 
Fort Sumter. At the time of his birth, America had 
produced almost no literature of the sort that is read 
for the enjoyment of its inherent charm; when he 
died, nearly all the writers whom we most love and 
honor had firmly established the foundations of their 
fame. Of all our men of letters, he was the first to 
write books that won admiration in both America 
and England, and that now, in the twentieth century, 
still find hosts of delighted readers on both sides of 
the Atlantic. He was our first notable humorist, our 
first graceful essayist and story-teller, almost our 
first biographer and historian. His life, moreover, 
was no less admirable than his literary achievement, 
and his personality was as lovable as his books. 

The subject of this biography was the youngest of 

43 



44 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

eleven children born to William and Sarah Irving. 
His father, a native of the Orkneys, a Scotchman of 
the most reputable ancestry, became a sailor, and 
during the Seven Years' War was a petty officer on 
an armed British packet plying between Falmouth 
and New York. He married Sarah Sanders, a young 
woman of Cornwall, in 1761, and two years later, 
after the Peace of Paris had been concluded, he de- 
termined to forsake the sea and seek his fortunes in 
the New World. The pair landed in New York 
July 18, 1763, and William Irving entered upon a 
mercantile career. He became fairly successful, but 
the outbreak of the Revolution put an end to his 
prosperity, and the threatened occupation of New 
York by the British forced him to escape with his 
family into New Jersey. Two years later, finding 
himself no better off than before, he returned to New 
York, then in possession of the British forces, and 
partly destroyed by fire. A Whig in his sympathies, 
he did much (with the aid of his warm-hearted wife) 
to help the unfortunate Americans then held in con- 
finement, and one of them, a Presbyterian minister, 
described him in a written testimonial as one who 
was " friendly inclined to the liberties of the United 
States, and greatly lamented the egregious bar- 
barities practiced by her enemies on the unhappy 
sons of liberty that unhappily fell in their power." 
This certificate was given with the idea that it might 



WASHINGTON IRVING 45 

be useful to the philanthropic merchant in case of a 
possible imputation of disloyalty, and was signed 
just before Evacuation Day. 

When General Washington took possession of 
New York, November 25, 1783, his infant namesake 
was, as we have seen, a little more than six months 
old. Six years later, when Washington again came 
to New York, to take his oath of office as President 
of the United States, a Scotch maid-servant of the 
Irving family called the attention of the chief magis- 
trate to the youthful namesake who was to become 
his biographer. Taking the child with her, she fol- 
lowed Washington into a shop one morning, and 
said: "Please, your honor, here's a bairn was named 
after you." The great man patted the boy on the 
head, and the incident was closed. 

The family life of the boy seems to have been 
fairly happy. His father was a Calvinist of the rigid 
old school, who had serious views about the bringing 
up of children, and was strong on church-going, the 
catechism, and family prayers. His mother, who 
had been raised in the more humanizing atmosphere 
of the Church of England, served to mitigate the 
severity of the paternal discipline, and freely dis- 
played the sympathy which the father held it his 
duty to suppress. Washington was well supplied 
with brothers and sisters, four of the former and 
three of the latter, all growing up together in the 



46 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

household. He was a normal sort of boy, lively in 
spirit, inclined to a little innocent mischief, and not 
too good to make occasional surreptitious visits to 
the theater. His schooling was desultory and pro- 
duced little effect upon him. It ended before he was 
sixteen, but he made up for his scholastic deficiencies 
by much reading, and he had the passionate delight 
in books which characterizes most boys who are 
predestined to become distinguished men of letters. 
" Robinson Crusoe," "The Arabian Nights," and 
"Orlando Furioso" (in Hoole's translation) were 
among his favorites, and he read them, openly by 
day, and furtively at night, when he was supposed 
to be asleep. His fondness for the theater led him 
to write a play at the age of thirteen. This preco- 
cious work has vanished, and in after years the 
author could not even remember its title. His 
biographer dryly observes: "It is fair to presume it 
had great dramatic demerit." 

At sixteen, Irving entered a law office, instead of 
joining his brothers at Columbia College. For the 
next five years (i 799-1804) until he became of age, 
he was supposed to be studying his profession, but 
he seems to have taken its duties very lightly. His 
health was delicate, and not much was expected of 
him in the way of application to study. Instead of 
poring over law-books, he read good literature, 
and instead of tying himself down in New York, he 



WASHINGTON IRVING 47 

made excursions up the Hudson; in one case he went 
as far as Montreal in his journeyings. These outings 
were significant for his literary future. Writing of 
them a half-century later, he said: "It has been my 
lot, in the course of a somewhat wandering life, to 
behold some of the rivers of the Old World, most 
renowned in history and song, yet none have been 
able to efface or dim the pictures of my native 
stream thus early stamped upon my memory. My 
heart would ever revert to them with a filial feeling, 
and a recurrence of the joyous associations of boy- 
hood; and such recollections are, in fact, the true 
fountains of youth which keep the heart from grow- 
ing old." The only other noteworthy happening of 
Irving's life during his five years as an idle law 
student is found in his first appearance in print. His 
brother Peter established a newspaper, the "Morn- 
ing Chronicle," in 1802, and Irving wrote for it a 
series of letters, or essays, humorous and satirical in 
vein, which he signed "Jonathan Oldstyle." They 
are interesting as foreshadowing the "Salmagundi" 
papers of five years later, but of small value on their 
own account. 

II 

When Irving came to his majority in the spring 
of 1804, the condition of his health was so alarming 
that his brothers determined to send him to Europe. 



48 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

He seemed to be threatened with tuberculosis, and 
his appearance was such that the captain of the 
vessel in which he embarked said to himself, on 
sight of his passenger: " There's a chap who will 
go overboard before we get across." Fortunately, 
this dismal prediction came to naught, for his health 
steadily improved, and he was able to extract the 
full measure of enjoyment from his wanderings. 
He landed at Bordeaux near the end of June, and 
learned that the Consul Bonaparte had been pro- 
claimed Hereditary Emperor of the French. He re- 
mained in Europe a year and a half — long enough 
to give an account in one of his last letters before 
starting homeward, of the victory of Trafalgar and 
the death of England's great captain. His itinerary 
took him, successively, to Paris, Marseilles, Nice, 
Genoa, Sicily, Naples, Rome, Milan, Paris again, 
the Netherlands, and London. He saw a great deal 
of many kinds of life, and stored his memory with 
images that subsequently had many reflections in his 
writings. 

Traveling in Europe was then by no means the 
tame and comfortable affair that it has become in 
our own day. The stage-coach and the sailing ves- 
sel were the only means of transportation, and the 
tourist industry had not come into existence. A 
traveler in France and Italy was likely to have some 
exciting experiences in those days of Napoleonic 



WASHINGTON IRVING 49 

warfare, and a traveler whose language was Eng- 
lish became an object of peculiar suspicion. The 
sea was quite as productive of adventures as the 
land, for pirates were a real danger, and Irving had 
his share of acquaintance with them in the Medi- 
terranean. His particular pirates boarded the ves- 
sel that was taking him from Genoa to Messina, 
and pretended to be commissioned with letters of 
marque, inspecting the ship's papers with due for- 
mality, and giving a receipt for their plunder, in the 
shape of an order on the British consul at Messina. 
It was an unprofitable raid, for there were no valu- 
ables in the ship's cargo and Irving personally lost 
nothing. Perhaps this exemption was due to the 
impression made by his many letters of introduction, 
which the ruffians examined, finding them addressed 
to the governor of Malta and other influential per- 
sons. If the pirates were not genuine, they at least 
looked their part, as may be seen from this descrip- 
tion: " A more villainous-looking crew I never be- 
held. Their dark complexions, rough beards, and 
fierce black eyes scowling under enormous bushy 
eyebrows, gave a character of great ferocity to their 
countenances. They seemed to regard us with the 
most malignant looks, and I thought I could per- 
ceive a sinister smile upon their countenances, as 
if triumphing over us who had fallen so easily into 
their hands." 



50 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Previous to this experience, our traveler had suf- 
fered a good deal of annoyance from inquisitive of- 
ficials who were difficult to satisfy in the matter of 
passports. There was a delay of more than a month 
at Nice on this score, and much chafing under the 
restraint. When red tape had done its worst, he 
was at last permitted to proceed to Genoa, where he 
met an old comrade, and was made free of the 
delightful society of the ancient city. He met many 
agreeable people, and was presented to the Doge. 
It was during his stay in Genoa that he received 
news of the death of Hamilton, whose slayer he was 
afterwards to assist in defending. "I sicken when 
I think of our political broils, slanders, and enmi- 
ties," he wrote at that time, "and I think, when I 
again find myself in New York, I shall never meddle 
any more in politics. " 

After the adventure with the pirates, two months 
were spent in Sicily, although, to be quite accurate, 
we must deduct three weeks of quarantine before 
the ship's passengers were permitted to go ashore 
at Messina. The appearance of Nelson's fleet in the 
harbor, in chase of the elusive Villeneuve, was an 
interesting spectacle soon offered to his view. At 
Syracuse, he explored the Ear of Dionysius, tried to 
get "a sly peep" at the nuns in the convents, and 
was disheartened at the aspect of the once prosper- 
ous city. " Streets gloomy and ill-built, and poverty, 



WASHINGTON IRVING 51 

filth, and misery on every side; no countenance dis- 
playing the honest traits of ease and independence; 
all is servility, indigence, and discontent." Catania 
came next, then Termini, then Palermo. It was 
carnival time, and the young traveler entered with 
zest into the festivities of the season. Finally, he 
embarked in a small fruit ship for Naples, not with- 
out trepidation, for Barbary cruisers were believed 
to be hovering about the coast, and the possibility of 
Tripolitan slavery was not a cheerful thing to con- 
template. 

Naples afforded Irving a spectacular performance 
on the part of Vesuvius, and an experience on the 
mountain which nearly brought upon him the fate of 
Pliny. Reaching Rome, he felt what so many thou- 
sands have felt, and found it impossible "to describe 
the emotions of the mind and the crowd of ideas that 
arise" when the pilgrim first walks the streets of the 
Eternal City. It was in Rome that he made the 
acquaintance of Washington Allston, than a young 
man of about his own age, and was so allured by 
the new friendship that he half made up his mind 
to turn painter and stay in Italy. He was received 
with surprising cordiality by the banker Torlonia, 
and afterward discovered that the warmth of his 
welcome had been caused by his Christian name, 
for his host had taken him to be a kinsman of the 
late President. He also met Madame de Stael in 



52 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Rome, and dining in her company one evening was 
much impressed by her voluble conversation and 
by the amazing number of the questions she put 
to him. After witnessing the ceremonies of Holy 
Week, he left Rome for Paris, stopping for a few 
days in Bologna and Milan. "There is no country 
where the prospects so much interest my mind, and 
awaken such a variety of ideas as in Italy" — this is 
the summing-up of his impressions of the land which 
is dearer than all others to artists and men of 
letters. 

A stay of three months in London, reached by 
way of the Netherlands, ended Irving's first Euro- 
pean sojourn. The letters of introduction to Eng- 
lish society that had been procured for him unfor- 
tunately miscarried, which threw him to a certain 
extent upon his own resources. But there were the 
theaters, which he frequented no less assiduously 
than in Paris, and his correspondence makes judi- 
cious comment upon Kemble, and pays the tribute 
of glowing enthusiasm to Mrs. Siddons. It was at 
the theater one evening that the news came to him 
of Nelson's death in the hour of victory . January 18, 
1806, he set sail for New York, reaching home after 
a stormy passage of sixty-four days, a passage not 
unattended with actual danger, for the ship had a 
narrow escape from wreck on the Long Island 
coast. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 53 

III 

The nine years from 1806 to 18 15 found Irving 
a resident of his native city, except for occasional 
visits to Albany, Philadelphia, Richmond, and 
Washington, and a brief experience as a staff officer 
of the Governor of New York toward the close of 
the war with England. These were also the years 
of " Salmagundi" and "A History of New York," 
which made him the most conspicuous figure in 
contemporary American letters. Viewed in a more 
personal light, they were the high-spirited years of 
early manhood and of a comparatively care-free exist- 
ence spent in the company of kindred souls and filled 
with varied social diversions. Irving had returned 
from Europe in excellent health; his family was 
comfortably circumstanced ; he felt the zest of living, 
and was prepared to make the most of his opportu- 
nities. 

Incidentally, he resumed his study of the law, and 
was admitted to the bar after he had been at home 
something less than a year. He even sought an 
appointment to some small office, which, however, 
he did not secure. A Federalist in politics, at the 
time when the party was slowly but surely disinte- 
grating, he actively expounded its interests in the 
spring election of 1807, only to be overwhelmed by 
the Republican tidal wave. "I got fairly drawn into 



54 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the vortex," he says, "and before the third day was 
expired, I was as deep in mud and politics as ever a 
moderate gentleman would wish to be; and I drank 
beer with the multitude; and I talked handbill- 
fashion with the demagogues, and I shook hands 
with the mob — whom my heart abhorreth." His 
sapient conclusion was to the effect that "this sav- 
ing of one's country is a nauseous piece of business," 
and he made up his mind that he would have no 
more of it. 

The fact that he was nominally a member of the 
legal profession, taken in connection with his brief 
political experiences, and his budding reputation 
as a writer, brought him a retainer for the defense 
in the case of Aaron Burr, who was awaiting trial 
in Richmond on the charge of treason. Though op- 
posed to Burr in politics, he felt a certain sympathy 
for the man, the kind of sympathy aroused by the 
under dog in hearts that are swayed by sentiment as 
well as reason. He took no very active part in the 
trial, but he remained for a couple of months in 
Richmond, and visited Burr in the penitentiary to 
which he had somewhat brutally been consigned. 
The way in which Burr was treated excited Irving's 
indignation. "It is not sufficient that a man against 
whom no certainty of crime is proved should be 
confined by bolts, and bars, and massy walls in a 
criminal prison ; but he is likewise to be cut off from 



WASHINGTON IRVING - 55 

all intercourse with society, deprived of all the kind 
offices of friendship, and made to suffer all the 
penalties and deprivations of a condemned crim- 
inal. . . . Whatever may be his innocence or guilt, 
in respect to the charges alleged against him (and 
God knows I do not pretend to decide thereon) his 
situation is such as should appeal eloquently to the 
feelings of every generous bosom." These senti- 
ments do credit to the writer's heart, and no special 
discredit to his intelligence. 

The year of Burr's trial was also the year of 
"Salmagundi," a periodical after the fashion of 
"The Spectator" and its eighteenth-century imi- 
tators, projected by Irving in conjunction with his 
brother William, and J. K. Paulding, whose sister 
was William Irving's wife. There was a fine old- 
fashioned flavor about the expressed purpose of this 
venture, which was, as the paper declared, "to in- 
struct the young, reform the old, correct the town, 
and castigate the age." This was to be done by 
means of "good-natured raillery," an expression 
which the ingenious compositor converted into "good- 
natured villainy," which unintended jest was so much 
to Irving's taste that he let the word stand with- 
out correction. "Salmagundi" lasted exactly one 
year, and twenty numbers were issued at irregular 
intervals. It met the popular fancy, and had a large 
circulation. It was also highly profitable as a busi- 



56 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

ness undertaking, but not to its authors, for they had 
fallen into the hands of a canny publisher, who took 
care that most of the proceeds should remain in his 
own pocket. When he became dictatorial as well 
as avaricious, the trio of young writers brought the 
publication to an abrupt end. Bryant, after the 
author's death, wrote of the periodical in the follow- 
ing terms: "Its gaiety is its own; its style of humor 
is not that of Addison or Goldsmith, though it has 
all the genial spirit of theirs; nor is it borrowed from 
any other writer. It is far more frolicsome and joy- 
ous, yet tempered by a native gracefulness." Charles 
Dudley Warner, in his life of Irving, adduces evi- 
dence which would seem to concern him, as con- 
tributor and editor, with an ephemeral periodical of 
similar type, seven numbers of which were printed 
at Ballston-Spa during the following summer. 

The death of Irving's father, in the fall of 1807, 
had clouded the gaiety of his life, and this bereave- 
ment was followed, a few months later, by the death 
of the married sister whose home was in the Mohawk 
valley, and whom Irving had visited on the occasion 
of his first voyage up the Hudson. In the spring of 
1809 death again came very near to him, carrying 
away Matilda Hoffman, a daughter of Josiah Ogden 
Hoffman, with whose family Irving had been on 
terms of the closest intimacy ever since his entrance 
into Hoffman's office as a law clerk. The Hoffman 



WASHINGTON IRVING 57 

house had been a second home to him, and he had 
long cherished the hope that Matilda would become 
his wife. She died at the age of seventeen, and the 
world turned black to her lover. Writing many years 
afterwards, he said that the anguish of her loss 
" seemed to give a turn to my whole character, and 
throw some clouds into my disposition, which have 
ever since hung about it." Certain mementos of the 
loved one, — her Bible and Prayer Book, a miniature 
and a braid of hair — were cherished by Irving all the 
rest of his life, and he could never recall her memory 
without visible emotion. 

Soon after the discontinuance of " Salmagundi," 
a new literary project engaged Irving's attention. 
Samuel Mitchill's ponderous " Picture of New 
York" had recently appeared, and Irving enlisted 
his brother Peter in the plan to write a burlesque of 
this book. But Peter left for Europe before the work 
had been put into any sort of shape, and Irving, left 
to carry it on alone, made considerable changes in 
the original plan, restricting its scope to the period of 
Dutch rule, and discarding much of the labored 
mock-pedantry of the notes that had been prepared. 
The work was well under way, when the death of 
Matilda interrupted its progress. Resuming his 
labors in the fall of 1809, the book was ready for the 
printer in November. It was to be published in 
Philadelphia, in order that it might take New York 



58 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

more completely by surprise, but its forthcoming 
appearance was heralded by a series of mystifying 
announcements in the New York " Evening Post." 
These announcements created the legend of Die- 
drich Knickerbocker, who was described as "a small 
elderly gentleman, not entirely in his right mind," 
who disappeared from his New York lodgings, leav- 
ing an unpaid bill and the manuscript of "a very 
curious kind of a written book." It was intimated 
by his landlord that if the bill remained unsettled, 
he might have to satisfy himself by disposing of the 
manuscript. Having thus aroused a curious interest 
in advance, the book was published December 6, 
1809, and appeared for sale in the shop windows. 
It was simply entitled "A History of New York," 
and dedicated to the New York Historical Society by 
a "sincere well-wisher and devoted servant, Diedrich 
Knickerbocker." The unwary public was com- 
pletely taken in by these devices, and at first pur- 
chased the book in the natural belief that it was a 
work of sober erudition. 

It did not take long for its true character to become 
generally known, and for its sales to increase rapidly 
in consequence of the discovery. And well might the 
public rejoice in the discovery, for American litera- 
ture had never before produced a book so delightfully 
whimsical and so richly humorous as this pretended 
history of New York under its Dutch governors, It 



WASHINGTON IRVING 59 

won instant acclaim at home, and soon attracted at- 
tention abroad. Scott was greatly delighted with it, 
and spent several evenings reading it aloud to the 
members of his household, and describing it as 
written in the style of Swift with touches of Sterne. 
In this work we have amusing sketches of the aris- 
tocracy of the time, such as the Van Brummels, "the 
first inventors of Suppawn or mush and milk"; the 
Van Klotens, "horrible quaff ers of new cider"; the 
Van Pelts, "mighty hunters of minks and muskrats" ; 
the Van Nests of Kinderhook, "valiant robbers of 
birds' nests"; the Van Higginbottoms, "armed with 
ferules and birchen rods, being a race of school- 
masters"; the Van Grolls, "of Anthony's nose"; the 
Gardiniers, "robbers of watermelons and smokers 
of rabbits"; the Van Hoesens of Sing Sing, "great 
choristers and players upon the jews-harp"; the 
Couenhavens, "a jolly race of publicans"; the Van 
Kortlands, "great killers of ducks"; then the Van 
Winkles of Haerlem, "potent suckers of eggs, and 
noted for running horses, and for running up of 
scores at taverns. They were the first that ever 
winked with both eyes at once. Lastly came the 
Knickerbockers, of the great town of Schaghtikoke, 
where the folk lay stones upon the houses in windy 
weather, lest they should be blown away. These 
derive their name, as some say, from Knicker, to 
shake, and Beker, a goblet, indicating thereby that 



60 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

they were sturdy toss-pots of yore; but, in truth, it 
was derived from Knicker, to nod, and Boeken, books: 
plainly meaning that they were great nodders or 
dozers over books." Some descendants of the old 
Dutch settlers, however, were incapable of enjoying 
such humor dispassionately. They found their own 
ancestors named (for Irving had taken his Dutch 
names at random) and held up to ridicule, and this 
hurt their feelings. One old lady in Albany wished 
that she were a man that she might horsewhip the 
offending author, whereupon Irving sought an intro- 
duction, and proved to be so agreeable in person that 
she forgot her indignation and became one of his 
warmest friends. The most striking evidence of the 
impression made by the book upon the general public 
is found in the fact that it firmly established the name 
Knickerbocker as a synonym for New Yorker in our 
common speech. 

Unlike most authors who achieve a great popular 
success, Irving did not seek to force his reputation 
by further production. During the six years follow- 
ing, up to the time of his departure for Europe in 
1815, his literary activities were restricted to a little 
desultory scribbling, done mainly in connection with 
a short-lived Philadelphia periodical, first called 
" Select Reviews," and afterwards "The Analectic 
Magazine." Irving took charge of this publication 
for a time (in 18 13-18 14) and wrote for it a number 



WASHINGTON IRVING 61 

of sketches, including brief biographies of the naval 
heroes of the war with England then being waged. 
Despite his unprecedented success he was by no 
means decided to devote himself henceforth to letters, 
which is not surprising when we consider that the 
profession may hardly be said to have existed at the 
time. Instead of further writing, he joined with two 
of his brothers in the importing business. This was 
somewhat risky in those days of embargos and 
blockades, and in consequence of this business we 
find him in Washington now and then working as a 
lobbyist. There was some talk of an appointment 
as Secretary of the Legation in France, where Joel 
Barlow was our Minister, but nothing came of it. 
He had a good time, as usual, on these business 
journeyings, and gave rather more attention to 
society and the theater than to politics. 

Like most sober-minded Americans, Irving re- 
gretted the war with England, but when it was in 
progress, he became as patriotic as could be wished. 
"Whenever our arms come in competition with those 
of the enemy, jealousy for our country's honor will 
swallow up every other consideration — our feelings 
will ever accompany the flag of our country to battle, 
rejoicing in its glory, lamenting over its defeat." This 
view is by no means rational, nor does it embody the 
highest type of political morality, but it is the most 
comfortable view to adopt in time of conflict, and 



62 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Irving was doubtless sincere in holding it. It will 
be remembered that his particular friend, Stephen 
Decatur, was the man whose toast, "Our country, 
right or wrong! " at least did us the service of clearing 
the subject of cant, and exposing the bare atrocity of 
the view which it stated. The burning of the capital 
by the British in 1814 raised Irving's indignation to 
the boiling-point, and spurred him to seek an active 
part in the war. He offered his services to Gov- 
ernor Tompkins, and was at once appointed as aide, 
thereby becoming Colonel Washington Irving. In 
September he was detailed for duty in the defense of 
Sackett's Harbor, on Lake Ontario, supposed to be 
in danger of a British attack. Nothing came of this 
affair, however, and he was back in New York a 
fortnight later. 

When the war with England was ended, we found 
a war with Algiers on our hands. Decatur was put 
in command of a squadron, and sent to bring the 
piratical Dey to terms. He asked Irving to go with 
him, which the latter agreed to do, almost on the 
spur of the moment. The departure of the squadron 
was delayed by the news of Napoleon's escape from 
Elba, but Irving, having once set his heart upon 
Europe, determined to go anyway, and embarked 
for Liverpool May 25, 181 5, with hardly more than a 
summer excursion in mind. It was seventeen years 
before he again saw his native country. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 63 

IV 

Irving went to Europe in the year of Waterloo and 
returned home in the year of the Reform Bill. The 
period of his foreign sojourn witnessed a remarkable 
development in American literature, for it established 
the fame of Bryant, Cooper, and Poe, to say nothing 
of such minor luminaries as Halleck, Drake, Percival, 
Sprague, and Simms. For Irving himself it was the 
meridian period of literary achievement, and to it 
belong "The Sketch-Book," "Bracebridge Hall," 
"Tales of a Traveller," "The Life and Voyages of 
Columbus," "The Conquest of Granada," "The 
Companions of Columbus," and "The Alhambra." 
These are the books upon which Irving's reputation 
chiefly rests, and the story of the years that produced 
them constitutes the most interesting part of his 
biography. 

He landed in England at a very exciting time. The 
Cent Jours were nearly at an end, and almost the 
first sight to meet his gaze when he reached Liverpool 
was that of the laurel-decked mail-coaches dashing 
through the streets, spreading the news of Welling- 
ton's victory and the flight of Napoleon from the 
field of Waterloo. The same kindly sentiment which 
had made him, a few years earlier, if not a partisan 
of Aaron Burr, at least a sympathizer, now inspired 
him with pity for the defeated Corsican. "In spite 



64 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

of all his misdeeds, he is a noble fellow, and I am 
confident will eclipse, in the eyes of posterity, all the 
crowned wiseacres that have crushed him by their 
overwhelming confederacy. If anything could place 
the Prince Regent in a more ridiculous light, it is 
Bonaparte suing for his magnanimous protection. 
Every compliment paid to this bloated sensualist, 
this inflation of sack and sugar, turns to the keenest 
sarcasm; and nothing shows more completely the 
caprices of fortune, and how truly she delights in 
reversing the relative situations of persons, and 
baffling the flights of intellect and enterprise — than 
that, of all the monarchs of Europe, Bonaparte should 
be brought to the feet of the Prince Regent." 

Public affairs, however, had to give way at once 
to private interests in Irving's attention. His brother 
Peter was ill, and the business of the firm was in 
bad shape. Irving set himself to what proved the 
impossible task of straightening it out, and what 
he had intended to be a vacation jaunt turned out 
to be a matter of plodding and ungrateful industry. 
For nearly three years he struggled with accounts 
and credits, and then, realizing that their extrication 
from the entanglement was hopeless, the brothers 
applied for relief to the Commissioners of Bank- 
ruptcy. This was in the spring of 1818. A year 
before, when the skies had seemed brighter for a 
time, and when his brother had in a measure recov- 



WASHINGTON IRVING 65 

ered health, Irving was planning a return to America, 
when he received news of the death of his aged 
mother. This "put an end to one strong inducement 
that was continually tugging at my heart," he wrote, 
and he gave up the idea of leaving England "for the 
present." 

Thrown upon his personal resources by the fail- 
ure of the business, Irving seems to have made up 
his mind, about the beginning of 1818, to pursue 
literature as a profession. A new edition of the 
"Knickerbocker" history was demanded in New 
York, and for it his friends Allston and Leslie pre- 
pared a set of illustrations. Toward the end of the 
year, he was so committed in his resolutions to the 
new course of life that he declined the offer of an 
attractive position in the Navy Department at Wash- 
ington. Confronted with the choice between an of- 
ficial post and the practical certainty of advance- 
ment, on the one hand, and the doubtful chances 
of a literary career, on the other, the decision was 
difficult, but it was finally made, although with mis- 
givings that kept him in a state of mental disturb- 
ance for some months. 

These misgivings did not wholly disappear until 
the following year, when the brilliant success of 
"The Sketch-Book" justified his determination. He 
had been at work upon this venture since the fall 
of 1 81 8, and in the following March he sent the first 



66 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

instalment of the work to America. "I have at- 
tempted," he wrote to his friend, Henry Brevoort, 
whom he had chosen as a literary representative, "no 
lofty theme, nor sought to look wise and learned, 
which appears to be very much the fashion among 
our American writers at present. I have preferred 
addressing myself to the feeling and fancy of the 
reader rather than to his judgment. My writings, 
therefore, may appear light and trifling in our coun- 
try of philosophers and politicians; but if they pos- 
sess merit in the class of literature to which they be- 
long, it is all to which I aspire in the work. I seek 
only to blow a flute accompaniment in the national 
concert, and leave others to play the fiddle and French 
horn." The best commentary upon this modest 
statement of the writer's programme may be supplied 
by mentioning that "Rip Van Winkle" was a part 
of this first consignment of "copy." 

The first number of "The Sketch-Book of Geof- 
frey Crayon, Gent.," was copyrighted May 15, 18 19, 
and published simultaneously in the four chief 
cities of the United States. The new pseudonym 
was as transparent a disguise as the earlier ones had 
been, and the identification of "Geoffrey Crayon" 
with "Diedrich Knickerbocker" and "Jonathan 
Oldstyle" was instant and complete. No less in- 
stant was the acclaim which greeted the new pub- 
lication, and the chorus of critical praise swelled 



WASHINGTON IRVING 6y 

steadily with the appearance of the successive num- 
bers. There were seven of these numbers alto- 
gether, published during a period of sixteen months, 
each number including three or four sketches and 
tales. They richly deserved the praises that were 
heaped upon them, since they revealed a talent for 
leisurely description and reminiscence, for refined 
humor and delicate pathos, for the exploitation of 
the sentimental possibilities of their varied themes, 
which had hitherto had no exemplification in Ameri- 
can literature. They had all the mellow charm of 
Addison and Goldsmith, yet they were by no means 
merely imitative of those eighteenth-century models, 
but offered instead a new illustration, based largely 
upon fresh material, of the literary genre which the 
earlier essayists had brought to such perfection of 
type. 

For a time, Irving had no thought of an English 
edition of "The Sketch-Book," but when a London 
weekly reprinted some of the earlier papers, and it 
was rumored that a pirated reproduction of the 
entire work was in prospect, he set about arrang- 
ing for an authorized publication. The book was 
offered to Murray, who politely declined the under- 
taking. It was then placed in the hands of a book- 
seller named Miller, who brought out a first volume, 
but soon thereafter failed in business. Murray was 
finally (through the friendly offices of Scott) per- 



68 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

suaded to take it over, and in May, 1820, published 
a two-volume edition of the work. The second 
volume of this edition included two articles that had 
not appeared in the American series. The book 
met with a cordial reception, and in some quarters 
it was taken to be the work of Scott, again seeking 
to mystify the public under a new pseudonym. Its 
success encouraged Murray to add a hundred guineas 
to the stipulated honorarium, and to undertake, later 
in the same year, an English edition of the "Knicker- 
bocker" history, which he called the "Don Quixote" 
or "Hudibras" of America. 

This period of Irving's life was marked by the 
most brilliant social success. He made friends wher- 
ever he was introduced, and among the more dis- 
tinguished men whom he came to know were Hal- 
lam, D 'Israeli, Jeffrey, Gifford, Campbell, Sou they, 
Milman, Foscolo, Belzoni, and Scott. His relation 
with Scott became especially intimate, and his letters 
give us many glimpses of his intercourse with that 
great writer and greater man. "He is a sterling 
golden-hearted old worthy, full of the joyousness 
of youth, with an imagination continually furnish- 
ing forth picture, and a charming simplicity of man- 
ner that puts you at ease with him in a moment." We 
have seen how Scott befriended him with Murray; 
further evidence of his esteem was provided in the 
form of an invitation to become the editor of an 



WASHINGTON IRVING 69 

Anti- Jacobin weekly to be published in Edinburgh. 
A handsome stipend was offered, but Irving, who 
now felt himself committed to authorship, and who 
disliked both politics and routine duties of any kind, 
was constrained to decline with grateful thanks. 

In August, 1820, Irving left London for Paris, 
where he remained nearly a year. He made the 
acquaintance of Canning, of Talma (whose perfor- 
mance of " Hamlet" greatly impressed him), of 
Bancroft (then fresh from his Gottingen studies), 
of John Howard Payne (then very much down on 
his luck), and of "Anacreon" Moore. His acquain- 
tance with Moore became intimacy, and the poet's 
journals give us many glimpses of the scenes which 
found them together. He says of Moore that he 
"has made me a gayer fellow than I could have 
wished ; but I found it impossible to resist the charm 
of his society. " Irving had brought his brother Peter 
with him on this visit to France, and had started 
him, at the cost of a heavy strain upon his own re- 
sources, in the business of managing a steamboat 
which was to ply upon the Seine. Leaving his 
brother, he returned to England in the summer of 
182 1 to be present at the coronation of the new 
king. On the eve of his departure from Paris, he 
was at Lord Holland's house, partaking of a farewell 
dinner, when Talma came in bringing the news of 
Napoleon's death at St. Helena. 



70 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

The next year (1821-1822) was spent in England. 
An illness which depressed and almost crippled him 
made a life of seclusion imperative for a while, and 
he swallowed " draughts and pills enough to kill a 
horse" in his efforts to get the better of it. He was 
saddened by learning of the death, in November, of 
his oldest brother William, who had stood to his 
boyhood in an almost fatherly relation, being many 
years his senior. He kept on writing, nevertheless, 
and the result was "Bracebridge Hall," hurriedly 
prepared for the press early in 1822. It was pub- 
lished in May, making simultaneous appearance in 
New York and London. In the spring, his health 
was sufficiently improved to permit a resumption of 
social activity, and he passed pleasant days with 
Lady Spencer at Wimbledon, with "Anastasius" 
Hope at Deep Dene, with Moore (who had com- 
pounded with the government for the defalcation of 
his Bermuda agent) in London, and with Rogers, 
who invited him to the famous breakfasts. A letter 
to brother Peter gives an account of his strenuous life 
at this time. "I have been leading a sad life lately, 1 
burning the candle at both ends, and seeing the 
fashionable world through one of its seasons. The 
success of my writings gave me an opportunity, and 
I thought it worth while to embrace it if it were only 
for curiosity's sake. I have therefore been tossed 
about ' hither and thither and whither I would not ' ; 



WASHINGTON IRVING 71 

have been at the levee and the drawing-room, been 
at routs, and balls, and dinners, and country-seats; 
been hand-and-glove with nobility and mobility, 
until, like Trim, I have satisfied the sentiment, and 
am now preparing to make my escape from all this 
splendid confusion.' ' 

In the middle of the summer of 1822, Irving set 
out for the Continent, and did not return to London 
for nearly two years. Germany was his first hunting- 
ground, and he made his way in leisurely fashion to 
Dresden, where he remained for several months. He 
took a roundabout route, and his chief stopping- 
places on the way were Aix-la-Chapelle, Mayence, 
Heidelberg, Munich, and Vienna. While in the 
Austrian capital he caught a glimpse of the King of 
Rome, a title which seems strangely ironical in the 
light of history. "The young Napoleon, or the Duke 
of Reichstadt, as he is called, is a very fine boy, full 
of life and spirit, of most engaging manners and 
appearance, and universally popular. He has some- 
thing of Bonaparte in the shape of his head and the 
lower part of his countenance; his eyes are like his 
mother's." 

Irving's Dresden sojourn found him almost com- 
pletely restored to health. He entered with zest into 
the social life of the city, and made many new friends. 
One of them, long years afterwards, supplied his 
biographer with the following description: "He was 



72 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

sought after by all in the best society, mingling 
much in the gay life of a foreign city, and a court 
where the royal family were themselves sufficiently 
intellectual to appreciate genius. ... He was 
thoroughly a gentleman, not merely externally in 
manners and look, but to the innermost fibres and 
core of his heart. Sweet-tempered, gentle, fastidious, 
sensitive, and gifted with the warmest affections, the 
most delightful and invariably interesting companion, 
gay and full of humor even in spite of occasional fits 
of melancholy, which he was however seldom subject 
to when with those he liked — a gift of conversation 
that flowed like a full river in sunshine, bright, easy, 
and abundant.' ' 

This characterization has a peculiar interest to 
us, because the writer was a young woman with 
whom Irving's relations were very intimate. Her 
name was Emily Foster, and she was the daughter 
of an English family then living for a time in Dresden. 
Although the official biography by his nephew makes 
light of Irving's attachment for this girl, there is 
reason to believe that he sought her in marriage, and 
that his failure to win her was a deep although secret 
disappointment. The evidence upon which this be- 
lief is based is provided by the reminiscences and 
journals of the Fosters, published after his death. 
The journal of Emily Foster's sister contains an 
entry which it is difficult to dispute. " He has written. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 73 

He has confessed to my mother, as to a dear and true 

friend, his love for E , and his conviction of its 

utter hopelessness. He feels himself unable to com- 
bat it. He thinks he must try, by absence, to bring 
more peace to his mind." It is a risky business for 
a susceptible young man to engage in private theatri- 
cals in company with the object of his affections, and 
it is even more risky to receive from her private in- 
structions in the French language. Irving challenged 
fate in both these ways, and paid the usual penalty. 
The " absence" which he thought might " bring 
more peace to his mind" took the shape of a five 
weeks' tour in the country of the Riesenge- 
birge. When he returned to Dresden, the Fosters 
were on the point of departing for their English 
home, and Irving went in their company as far as 
Rotterdam, where their ways parted, he taking a 
reluctant leave, and turning his footsteps toward 
Paris. 

Irving remained for nearly a year in the French 
capital, renewing his old friendships, making some 
new ones, and leading a somewhat desultory life as 
far as literary production was concerned. He worked 
for some time with Payne, helping him with his own 
plays, and collaborating with him in the work of 
revamping French plays for the English stage. 
Galignani proposed the editing of a library of " British 
Classics," and made terms with Irving for his super- 



74 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

vision of the undertaking, but it was soon abandoned, 
and a brief memoir of Goldsmith was the only piece 
of writing done in this connection. Meanwhile, a new 
collection of stories and essays was gradually being put 
together, and was offered to Murray in March, 1824. 
This project was the " Tales of a Traveller," which 
the publisher promptly accepted, and for which he 
agreed to make liberal payment. In consequence of 
this arrangement, the summer found Irving again in 
London, correcting proofs, and hurriedly preparing 
enough new matter to fill out the two volumes of the 
English edition. Murray brought out the work in 
August, and it was published in New York (in four 
parts) during the next few weeks. After seeing his 
book through the press, the author hurried back to 
Paris. 

When he began to hear from his new publication, 
the reports were not wholly encouraging. The 
critics began to find fault with him, both in England 
and his native country. A discreetly anonymous 
friend in America took pains to clip the unkind 
notices, and see that the author was supplied with 
them. Irving was always unusually sensitive to 
adverse criticism, and fell into one of his despondent 
moods. A reflection of that mood may be seen in a 
letter written to one of his nephews who was feared 
to cherish literary aspirations. "I hope none of 
those whose interests and happiness are dear to me 



WASHINGTON IRVING 75 

will be induced to follow my footsteps, and wander 
into the seductive but treacherous paths of literature. 
There is no life more precarious in its profits and 
fallacious in its enjoyments than that of an author. 
I speak from an experience which may be considered 
a favorable and prosperous one; and I would earn- 
estly dissuade all those with whom my voice has any 
effect from trusting their fortunes to the pen. For 
my part, I look forward with impatience to the time 
when a moderate competency will place me above 
the necessity of writing for the press." This passage 
must not be taken too seriously. Every occupation 
has its drawbacks as well as its advantages, and it is 
a common trait of human nature to magnify the 
former when reflecting upon one's own chosen call- 
ing. There are few people, however successful they 
may be, who do not at times look longingly at some 
other form of successful achievement, and imagine 
that they would have been happier in the field of 
endeavor thus contemplated. They see only the 
glamor which attends the fame of other men, and 
only the reverses and disappointments which seem 
to gather about their own. 

Another year was spent in Paris, bearing no par- 
ticular fruit. A life of Washington was proposed 
to Irving by Constable, whose failure soon thereafter 
put an end to any possible arrangements in that 
quarter. The notion of a series of " American 



76 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Essays" occupied the author's mind for a time, and 
he worked upon them at intervals, but they were 
abandoned for other undertakings, and consequently 
never saw the light. In September, 1825, Irving was 
curious about the vintage, and, still accompanied by 
brother Peter, went to Bordeaux. Here he remained 
four months, scribbling " American Essays" now 
and then, upon such subjects as our scenery, our 
national prejudices, and our treatment of the stranger 
within our gates. It was toward Spain that his 
thoughts had long been turning, and now that he 
found himself near the frontier, the lure was irresist- 
ible. Comparing Spain with Italy, he had, earlier 
in the year, written to his nephew in these terms: 
"I do not know anything that delights me more than 
the old Spanish literature. You will find some 
splendid histories in the language, and then its 
poetry is full of animation, pathos, humor, beauty, 
sublimity. The old literature of Spain partakes of 
the character of its history and its people; there is an 
oriental splendor about it. The mixture of Arabic 
fervor, magnificence, and romance, with old Cas- 
tilian pride and punctilio; the chivalrous heroism, 
the immaculate virtue; the sublimated notions of 
honor and courtesy, all contrast finely with the 
sensual amours, the self-indulgences, the unprin- 
cipled and crafty intrigues, which so often form the 
groundwork of Italian story." 



WASHINGTON IRVING 77 



Alexander Everett was the American minister to 
Spain at this time, and Irving, who had met him the 
previous summer in Paris, had been promised a 
nominal connection with the legation, should he 
decide to visit the country. Spain being still in an 
unsettled condition, this official status would be 
useful as a protection to the traveler. Irving wrote 
to Everett from Bordeaux, recalling the promise, and 
asking for the appointment. In January, 1826, he 
received his papers, and with them a suggestion from 
Everett that the author might profitably employ 
himself with an English translation of Navarrete's 
forthcoming work upon the voyages of Columbus. 
This suggestion appealed to Irving, who in his reply 
agreed to undertake the work. The next month 
found him in Madrid, but an examination of Navar- 
rete's work, which had just appeared, showed it to 
be far too formidably documented to please the 
general reader, and so, in place of its translation, 
Irving soon set about the preparation of an original 
biography of the great discoverer. The work thus 
cut out for him absorbed his energies for a year and a 
half, and in the summer of 1827, he had the satis- 
faction of seeing it completed, and of arranging with 
Murray for its publication. The price paid was three 
thousand guineas, the payments to be extended over 



78 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

a period of two years, thus providing comfortably for 
the near future. Writing the biography proved to 
be very hard work, as the endless vistas of historical 
controversy revealed themselves to the investigator, 
and Irving toiled at the task night and day, per- 
mitting himself little recreation until it was com- 
pleted. 

"The Life and Voyages of Columbus" was pub- 
lished by Murray in four large volumes, while the 
American edition filled only three. The work did 
not appear until early in 1828. It has become the 
fashion for professional historians to speak slightingly 
of this biography, and doubtless the exacting scholar- 
ship of a later period could detect many flaws in the 
performance. Irving was a man of letters far more 
than he was a scholar, yet he was a fair scholar for 
the time in which he lived, and his work involved 
not a little of the more rigorous sort of investiga- 
tion. Although based mainly upon secondary sources, 
it was also based in part upon the exploration of 
archives, the deciphering of documents, and the 
visiting of the scenes described. At all events, it 
supplied English readers for the first time with a 
comprehensive history of the life and voyages of the 
great Admiral of the Ocean Seas who laid the founda- 
tions of the Spanish Empire. Before its appearance, 
nothing more extensive than Robertson's summary 
sketch of the subject had been available to English 



WASHINGTON IRVING 79 

readers not conversant with Spanish, and Irving's 
work presented them with a liberal exposition of the 
learning of the Spanish historians, and presented 
it in a form so fascinating that it still provides the 
most attractive account of the subject in our language. 
While most noteworthy as a contribution to literature, 
it is by no means despicable as a historical treatise. 

In the spring of 1828, the author, who had hitherto 
kept pretty close to Madrid, started upon the ex- 
ploration of Andalusia. The stages of his journey 
were Cordova, Granada, Malaga, Gibraltar, Cadiz, 
and Seville. His brother Peter returned to France 
at this time, leaving him alone in Spain. Stories of 
robbers were rife, and the journey was attended by 
dangers that were not altogether imaginary, although 
they did not become realized. Writing from Granada 
Irving says, in humorous vein: "Our journey has 
hitherto been auspicious, that is to say, we have 
escaped being robbed, though we have been in dens 
as perilous as that of Daniel and the lions; our great- 
est risk, however, has, I am convinced, been from 
our own escort, which for part of the way has been 
composed of half-reformed robbers, retired from 
business, but who seemed to have a great hankering 
after their old trade." It was upon this journey that 
Irving first had sight of Granada and the Alhambra : 
"The evening sun shone gloriously upon its red 
towers as we approached it, and gave a mellow tone 



80 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

to the rich scenery of the vega. It was like the magic 
glow which poetry and romance have shed over this 
charming place. ... It is impossible to contem- 
plate this delicious abode and not feel an admiration 
of the genius and the poetical spirit of those who first 
devised this earthly paradise." 

Irving reached Seville in April, 1828, and wrote 
to his brother: "I shall probably remain here some 
weeks, till I can get the work we talked of in order 
for the press." The work mentioned was "The Con- 
quest of Granada," which he had planned, and even 
begun, while in Madrid, and which he was now to 
continue with the fresh enthusiasm aroused by the 
scenes with which it was to deal. The stay of "some 
weeks" which he expected to make in Seville length- 
ened out into more than a year, enabling him to 
complete the new book, as well as to make the correc- 
tions necessary for a new edition of the "Columbus," 
and to prepare an abridgment of that biography in a 
single volume. This latter task was undertaken to 
frustrate the nefarious plans of an American pirate. 
The work was done under great pressure, the entire 
volume of about five hundred pages (largely re- 
written) being prepared in nineteen days. The work 
had to go to New York by a particular boat if it 
were to get there in time to defeat the purpose of the 
"paltry poacher" who had made it necessary, and 
the author pressed into his service every man, 



WASHINGTON IRVING 81 

woman, and child of his acquaintance, who under- 
stood English, in Seville to help him copy the manu- 
script in time. This abridgement was given to Mur- 
ray without charge, and had a large sale in England. 

"A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada" was 
published in the spring of 1829. It purported to be 
the work of one "Fray Antonio Agapido," but 
Murray thought it better to insert the author's real 
name. Irving was indignant at this "unwarrant- 
able liberty," because it represented him, in his 
character of chronicler, as telling "many round un- 
truths." " Literary mystifications are excusable," 
he wrote, "when given anonymously or under feigned 
names, but are impudent deceptions when sanctioned 
by an author's real name." He describes the 
"Chronicle" as being "made up from all the old 
Spanish historians I could lay my hands on, colored 
and tinted by the imagination so as to have a roman- 
tic air, without destroying the historical basis or 
the chronological order of events. ... I have de- 
picted the war as I found it in the old chronicles, 
a stern, iron conflict, more marked by bigotry than 
courtesy, and by wild and daring exploits of fierce 
soldiery, than the gallant contests of courteous 
cavaliers." 

A second visit to Granada, and a sojourn of nearly 
three months in the Alhambra, followed upon Irving's 
year in Seville, and filled his time up to the mid- 



82 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

summer of 1829. This was a happy time indeed, 
for the Governor of the Alhambra, preferring him- 
self to live in town, placed his quarters in the palace 
at Irving's disposal. Soon deserted by the com- 
panion who had accompanied him thither, he was 
left in sole possession for the period of his stay. The 
caretakers provided for his bodily comforts, and 
he was free to work and dream at his ease. He 
wrote to a nephew this account of his daily life. "I 
take my breakfast in the Saloon of the Ambassadors 
or the Court of the Lions; and in the evening, when 
I throw by my pen, I wander about the old palace 
until quite late, with nothing but bats and owls to 
keep me company. Little Dolores, the bright-eyed 
Spanish girl who waits upon me, cannot compre- 
hend the pleasure I find in these lonesome strolls; 
as nothing would tempt her to venture down into 
the great dreary courts and halls of the palace after 
dark ; and Matteo Ximenez, the ragged historian who 
brushes my clothes, is sadly afraid I am very melan- 
choly." 

Again and again do his letters recur to the delight 
of these summer days. Changing to another part 
of the palace, he writes of the new quarters as fol- 
lows, "I never had such a delicious abode. One of 
my windows looks into the little garden of Lindaraxa ; 
the citron-trees are full of blossoms and perfume the 
air, and the fountain throws up a beautiful jet of 



WASHINGTON IRVING 83 

water; on the opposite side of the garden is a window 
opening into the saloon of Los Dos Hermanos, 
through which I have a view of the Fountain of 
Lions and a distant peep into the distant halls of 
the Abencerrages. Another window of my room 
looks out upon the deep valley of the Darro, and 
commands a fine view of the Generalife. I am so 
in love with this apartment that I can hardly force 
myself from it to take my promenades. I sit by my 
window until late at night, enjoying the moonlight 
and listening to the sound of the fountains and the 
singing of the nightingales; and I have walked up 
and down the Chateaubriand gallery until midnight. " 
This description may well excite the reader to an 
innocent envy which reaches its height when the 
following addition is made: " In one of the great 
patios or courts there is a noble tank of water, one 
hundred and twenty feet long and between twenty 
and thirty feet wide. The sun is upon it all day, 
so that at night it is a delightfully tempered bath, 
in which I have room to swim at large." Did ever 
another writer do his work under such ideal condi- 
tions ! 

The monotonous serenity of this idyllic existence 
was occasionally broken, now by the unexpected 
appearance of a nephew, now by the visit of a com- 
pany of British officers, now by the society of the 
Duke de Gor or the Count de Luque — two gentle- 



84 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

men in whose society Irving took much pleasure. 
The end of the dream came when he received news 
that the efforts of his friends had secured for him 
an appointment as Secretary of our Legation in 
England. Reluctantly, and more on account of the 
solicitations of those friends than of his own wishes, 
he bade farewell to his castle of indolence. "I have 
a thorough indifference to all official honors," he 
wrote to his brother, "and a disinclination for the 
turmoil of the world ; yet having no reasons of stronger 
purport for declining, I am disposed to accord with 
what appears to be the wishes of my friends.' ' And 
writing to Alexander Everett he said: "As the of- 
fice has been unsought by me, so in accepting I 
shall have it clearly understood, that I mean to 
commit myself to no set of men or measures, but 
mean, as heretofore, to keep myself as clear as possi- 
ble of all party politics, and to continue to devote 
all my spare time to general literature." Another 
reason for the reluctance with which he accepted 
the appointment was found in the fact that it post- 
poned indefinitely a return to America which he had 
planned for the near future. More and more during 
the years of his self-imposed exile his country was 
tugging at his heartstrings and the desire to see it 
once more had become well-nigh irresistible. 

The regret with which Irving took leave of Spain 
is voiced in these words: "A residence of between 



WASHINGTON IRVING 85 

three and four years in it has reconciled me to many 
of its inconveniences and defects, and I have learned 
more and more to like both the country and the 
people." In the way of literary work, he took back 
with him to England the finished manuscripts of 
"The Voyages of the Companions of Columbus," 
"The Legends of the Conquest of Spain," and the 
manuscript of "The Alhambra" well on its way 
toward completion. He reached London by way of 
Paris, traveling for several weeks, by slow stages, in 
September, 1829. He found his diplomatic chief, 
Lewis McLane, suffering from illness, which put the 
ceremonial business of the legation upon his untried 
shoulders. New honors awaited him in England. 
The gold medal of the Royal Society of Literature 
was voted him, and Oxford offered him, "against 
the stomach of my sense," the degree of Doctor of 
Laws. The ceremony of bestowal was, however, 
delayed until 1831, on account of the death of the 
King. In the summer of 1830, Irving made a brief 
visit to Paris, and witnessed some of the after-scenes 
of the July Revolution . Early in 1 83 1 , " The Voyages 
of the Companions of Columbus" was published. 
In the summer of that year, McLane was recalled 
to take a seat in the Cabinet, and Van Buren was 
sent to England in his place. During the interim. 
Irving was temporarily elevated to the rank of 
Charge d'Affaires, but as soon as his new chief ar- 



86 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

rived he seized what seemed to be a suitable oppor- 
tunity to retire from the legation. 

It was at this time that Irving saw Scott, who was 
stopping in London on his way to Italy, for the last 
time. The interview was pathetically affecting. 
"At dinner, amid the conversation of the others, 
his mind would occasionally gleam up, and he 
would strike in with some story in his old way; but 
the light would soon die out, and his head would 
sink, and his countenance fall as he saw that he had 
failed in giving point to what he was telling." A 
few weeks following this meeting were pleasantly 
occupied by a round of country visits, including a 
pilgrimage to Newstead Abbey. Early in 1832, 
Irving was asked to secure an English publisher for 
the new volume of Bryant's poems, and was at 
considerable pains to perform the service for his 
American fellow-craftsman. It was a bad time for 
book-publishing, on account of the reform agitation 
and a threatened epidemic of cholera, but Irving 
offered the bait of an introduction in the shape of a 
long dedicatory letter to Rogers, and a publisher 
was found. The depressed condition of the book 
trade also put difficulties in the way of his own 
"Alhambra," but the arrangements for its publica- 
tion were at last made, and the author found him- 
self free to prepare for the journey home, so long 
cherished in anticipation, and so many times unex- 



WASHINGTON IRVING 87 

pectedly delayed. He sailed from Le Havre April 
11, 1832, and landed in his native city after a voyage 
of forty days' duration. 



VI 

When Irving took his leave of the Old World, 
after the seventeen years of rich experience and 
fruitful toil which he had spent abroad, he was just 
entering upon his fiftieth year. The America which 
he had left had still been ruled by the line of states- 
men-presidents; the America to which he now 
returned was controlled by the spirit of Jacksonian 
democracy. His native city of New York had 
doubled in population, its waters were crowded with 
shipping, and what had been its waste places were 
now the haunts of industry and the sites of newly- 
erected buildings. Literary fellowship was also 
awaiting him, for he was no longer our only man of 
letters, and this was more pleasing than all the rest 
to the man whose thoughts were never tinged by 
professional jealousy, who derived no less a pleasure 
from the success of his brother workers than he did 
from his own. 

Soon after his arrival, he had to endure what was 
to him the severe ordeal of a public dinner of wel- 
come. "I look forward to it with awe," he wrote, 
"and shall be heartily glad when it is over." It 



88 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

took place at the City Hotel, and there were about 
three hundred guests, with Chanceller Kent as toast- 
master. He was called the " Dutch Herodotus," 
with other titles of affection and esteem, and could 
not escape from making a speech of acknowledgment. 
The question had been raised as to whether he could 
be content to live in America after so long an es- 
trangement, and he expressed himself in these terms : 
"I come from gloomier climes to one of brilliant 
sunshine and inspiring purity. I come from coun- 
tries lowering with doubt and danger, where the 
rich man trembles, and the poor man frowns — where 
all repine at the present and dread the future. I 
come from these, to a country where all is life and 
animation; where I hear on every side the sound of 
exultation; where every one speaks of the past with 
triumph, the present with delight, the future with 
growing and confident anticipation. Is this not a 
community in which one may rejoice to live? Is 
this not a city by which one may be proud to be 
received as the son ? Is this not a land in which one 
may be happy to fix his destiny, and his ambition — 
if possible — to found a name? I am asked how 
long I mean to remain here. They know but little 
of my heart or my feelings who can ask me this ques- 
tion. I answer, as long as I live." At this point, 
the cheering was so loud, and the speaker was so 
surprised with himself at having done so well, that 



WASHINGTON IRVING 89 

he brought his remarks to a close. He had intended 
to say a great deal more, but felt that it would be 
tempting Providence to continue after that out- 
burst of applause. 

"The Alhambra," the manuscript of which had 
preceded his own arrival, was published in two 
volumes, June 9, 1832, in Philadelphia. It appeared 
in England, and also in a French translation, at 
about the same time. It was hailed as a worthy 
successor to "The Sketch-Book, 5 ' and the reviews 
were almost unanimous in its praise. When it ap- 
peared, Irving was in Washington, visiting his former 
diplomatic chief, now Secretary of the Treasury. 
He called on the President, who seemed to him to 
have "a little dash of the Greek," besides being the 
"old Roman" of his admirers, to be knowing as 
well as honest. He thanked Jackson for the appoint- 
ment of three years earlier, and at the same time 
made it clear that he had no further ambition to 
occupy a public office. 

On his return from the capital, Irving started on 
a course of travel which, intended at first for a 
summer jaunt, grew through unforeseen circum- 
stances into an extensive Western journey, lasting 
until winter. Its first stage took him up the Hudson 
to some places that were familiar, and others that 
were new. This was his first visit to the Catskills, for 
the description of that region in "Rip Van Winkle" 



9 o LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

had been only imagined. He found with delight 
that the scenes of Rip's adventures had been identi- 
fied, and were all ticketed for the instruction of 
tourists. It was suggested that the bones of Rip's 
dog would probably be unearthed by some future 
discoverer. Boston, the White Mountains, and 
Saratoga, were next visited, and then Trenton Falls, 
as part of a plan for exploring western New York. 
Meeting on this journey Mr. Ellsworth, one of the 
Commissioners appointed to treat with certain In- 
dian tribes, he accepted an invitation to go with the 
Commission to its objective point far up the Arkansas 
River. The course followed was by way of Cin- 
cinnati and Louisville to St. Louis, then by horse- 
back across the plains to Fort Gibson, Arkansas, and 
the wilderness beyond. Of the month spent in this 
wilderness, he wrote: "Our tour was a very rough, 
but a very interesting and gratifying one, part of 
the time through an unexplored country. We led 
a complete hunter's life, subsisting upon the products 
of the chase, camping by streams or pools, and 
sleeping on skins and blankets in the open air; but 
we were all in high health; and, indeed, nothing is 
equal to such a campaign, to put a man in full 
health and spirits." 

A roundabout journey by way of New Orleans and 
the Gulf and Atlantic States, brought Irving to 
Washington in December. This was the time of the 



WASHINGTON IRVING 91 

nullification agitation, and on his way through South 
Carolina, the governor's invitation to come again 
soon had been met with the suggestive reply: "I'll 
come with the first troops." The political outlook 
did not seem very bright to him. "I confess I see 
so many elements of sectional prejudice, hostility, and 
selfishness stirring and increasing in activity and 
acrimony in this country, that I begin to doubt 
strongly of the long existence of the general Union." 
The session of Congress following upon Jackson's 
nullification proclamation proved so attractive to 
Irving that he remained in Washington until its 
close, "I became so deeply interested in the debates 
of Congress that I almost lived in the capitol. The 
grand debate in the Senate occupied my mind as 
intensely for three weeks, as did ever a dramatic 
representation. I heard almost every speech, good 
and bad, and did not lose a word of any of the best. 
I think my close attendance on the legislative halls 
has given me an acquaintance with the nature and 
operation of our institutions, and the character and 
concerns of the various parts of the Union, that I 
could not have learned from books for years." His 
opinion of the President, now observed at close 
range, is tersely given in the following sentence: 
"The more I see of this old cock of the woods the 
more I relish his game qualities." 
During the remainder of the year 1833, Irving 



92 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

kept moving briskly about. A stay in Baltimore 
delayed his return to New York, which he had 
hardly reached when he started south again to visit 
Fredericksburg and Charlottesville, and "had to 
fight off from an invitation to a public dinner" at the 
University of Virginia. New York, Saratoga, and 
the Catskills came next in his itinerary, then a 
carriage journey with Van Buren (whose stay in 
England had been brief, owing to the Senate's refusal 
to confirm his appointment) among the old Dutch 
settlements about New York, then a rapid move to 
Washington, and finally a return to New York with 
the intention of settling down to work. It was not 
without a purpose that these journeyings had been 
undertaken; the author was already planning a 
series of writings that should do for his own country 
what his earlier books had done for England and 
the Continent. "I am now getting at home upon 
American themes," he wrote toward the close of this 
year, "and the scenes and characters I have noticed 
since my return begin to assume a proper tone and 
form and grouping in my mind, and to take a tinge 
from my imagination." 

The next year was spent quietly and industriously, 
to such effect that the author was able, during 1835, 
to publish the three volumes of "Crayon Mis- 
cellanies." This plan was adopted "to clear off all 
the manuscripts I have on hand, and to throw off 



WASHINGTON IRVING 93 

casual lucubrations concerning home scenes." His 
"Tour of the Prairies" rilled the first volume; the 
second contained "Abbotsford" and "Newstead 
Abbey"; the third was made up of the "Legends of 
the Conquest of Spain," already mentioned as 
written several years before. All three volumes were 
published on advantageous terms in both America 
and England. They proved successful far beyond 
the author's modest expectation; his income from 
them, from the farming out of all his earlier works 
to his Philadelphia publishers, and from an abridg- 
ment of his "Columbus" for the use of schools, was 
sufficient to give him a fair prospect of easy times 
for the rest of his life. They would have been still 
easier had he been less generous to his brother Peter, 
and more cautious in the matter of speculative in- 
vestments. 

In the latter part of 1834, he was approached by 
John Jacob Astor, who was extremely desirous of 
having Irving write the history of his fur-trading 
enterprise, and his settlement of Astoria, at the mouth 
of the Columbia River. The subject appealed 
strongly to Irving, but he hesitated at thought of the 
preliminary drudgery it would mean for him. An 
enormous amount of work would have to be done 
in sifting the documentary material, and in procuring 
verbal accounts from the pioneers of the enterprise, 
before the preparation of a consecutive narrative 



94 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

could begin. He solved this difficulty by enlisting the 
services of his nephew Pierre (his future biographer) 
for this dull routine work, and an arrangement satis- 
factory to all parties was made. When the material 
was put into shape for him to work upon it, he 
quartered himself in Astor's country house at Hell 
Gate, where he had for companions, besides the old 
gentleman, his nephew and the poet Halleck. The 
book was rapidly written, and was practically ready 
for publication by the close of 1835, although it did 
not appear until late in the following year. It had a 
particular success in England, on account of the 
novelty of its subject-matter, and "The Spectator " 
went so far as to call it the author's chej d'ceuvre: 
"the most finished narrative of such a series of 
adventures that ever was written." 



VII 

The desire for a settled existence and a home now 
grew so strongly upon Irving that we find him, in 
the spring of 1835, negotiating for the purchase of 
a ten-acre farm on the Hudson. The spot chosen 
was close to Sleepy Hollow, about twenty-five miles 
up-stream on the left bank, opposite the point at 
which the Palisades begin to lose their precipitous 
character, and bordering upon the expansion of the 
river known as the Tappan Zee. There was already 



WASHINGTON IRVING 95 

a small Dutch cottage, stone-built, upon the farm, 
and this the author proceeded to enlarge into the 
comfortable dwelling which at first he called the 
Roost (Rest), and which in later years became 
known by the name of Sunnyside. As the work of 
reconstruction went on, he had the usual experience 
of finding that it was going to cost much more than 
had been expected, and humorously expressed the 
intention of writing "a legend or two about it and 
its vicinity, by way of making it pay for itself." He 
had hoped to have the house ready for occupancy 
for the summer of 1836, but the work dragged, and 
the place was not really habitable before October. 
Its capacity for running up expenses caused Irving 
to remark that "for such a small edifice it has a 
prodigious swallow, and reminds me of those little 
fairy changelings called Killcrops, which eat and 
eat, and are never the fatter." When at last he 
moved into it, he had for a housemate Peter Irving, 
who had returned after an absence of twenty-seven 
years to pass his remaining days in America. Other 
inhabitants of the place were a sociable cat named 
Imp, a pig "of first-rate stock and lineage named 
Fanny," and a flock of geese. At holiday time he 
writes contentedly that "everything goes on cheerily 
in my little household, and I would not exchange the 
cottage for any chateau in Christendom." 
The winter of 1836-183 7 found Irving at work 



96 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

upon "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville," 
which was published in the spring, and may be re- 
garded as a sort of sequel to "Astoria." Bonneville 
was an officer of the United States army who had 
spent many years in the far West, and had a great 
variety of experiences with trappers and hunters and 
Indians in the Rocky Mountain regions. Irving 
found him at work in Washington upon his maps 
and traveling notes, and proposed to purchase from 
him his manuscript material and fit it for publica- 
tion. The offer was accepted and the work, com- 
bined with information and incident from a number 
of collateral sources, was made into a highly readable 
narrative. 

Aside from the publication of this book, the year 
1837 na d few incidents worth being chronicled. 
There was a dinner given in New York to the book- 
selling trade, and Irving took occasion to propose a 
toast for "Samuel Rogers — the friend of American 
genius." This tribute was evoked by a letter re- 
ceived from Rogers the day before, in which Hal- 
leck's poems were described as "better than anything 
we can do just now on our side of the Atlantic." 
During this season the Roost had a visit from no less 
a personage than Louis Napoleon, who had been set 
free on the American shores from his imprisonment 
on a French man-of-war. This year was also one of 
the few occasions when Irving found his motives as 



WASHINGTON IRVING 97 

an author aspersed in the public prints, and was 
constrained to make a dignified defense. One of 
those self-constituted champions of Americanism 
who always take umbrage at any words of praise 
bestowed upon other nations, or any deference to 
their sentiments, complained that Irving had re- 
touched one of Bryant's poems when he supervised 
them in their English edition, and that in presenting 
his own "Tour of the Prairies " to the English pub- 
lic, he had studiously omitted the amor patrice of his 
American preface. The charges were too trivial to 
deserve much attention, and Bryant himself repudi- 
ated his over-zealous defender, but Irving thought it 
best to publish a statement of his motives, and to 
rebuke his assailant with some asperity. "Plain 
dealing, Sir, is a great merit, when accompanied by 
magnanimity, and exercised with a just and generous 
spirit; but if pushed too far, and made the excuse 
for indulging every impulse of passion or prejudice, 
it may render a man, especially in your situation, a 
very offensive, if not a very mischievous member of 
the community." 

A nomination for Congress had been offered Irving, 
and declined, in 1834. In 1838, he writes, "I had a 
full deputation from Tammany Hall at the cottage, 
informing me that I had been unanimously and 
vociferously nominated as Mayor." What he thought 
about this proffered distinction may be inferred from 



98 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

a letter in which he says: "I value my peace of mind 
too highly to suffer myself to be drawn into the 
vortex of New York politics; which, not to speak 
profanely, is a perfect Hell Gate." Van Buren's re- 
quest that he should accept a Cabinet position, and 
become Secretary of the Navy, was a different mat- 
ter, but even this honor he felt bound to put aside, 
partly because he felt that the duties of the office 
would make him "mentally and physically a perfect 
wreck," and partly because, although he regarded 
Van Buren with warm friendship, he was very far 
from being in sympathy with the policies of the ad- 
ministration. 

The year which brought Irving these proffered 
distinctions brought also what was probably the 
greatest sorrow of his life. His brother Peter died in 
June, after a brief illness. Some extracts from a 
letter written three months afterward will serve to 
indicate how deeply this loss was felt. " Every day, 
every hour I feel how completely Peter and myself 
were intertwined together in the whole course of our 
existence. Indeed, the very circumstance of our 
both having never been married, bound us more 
closely together. ... A dreary feeling of loneliness 
comes on me at times, that I reason against in vain; 
for, though surrounded by affectionate relatives, I 
feel that none can be what he was to me; none can 
take so thorough an interest in my concerns; to none 



WASHINGTON IRVING 99 

can I so confidingly lay open my every thought and 
feeling, and expose every fault and foible, certain of 
such perfect toleration and indulgence. . . . My 
literary pursuits have been so often carried on by his 
side, and under his eye — I have been so accustomed 
to talk over every plan with him, and, as it were, to 
think aloud when in his presence, that I cannot open 
a book, or take up a paper, or recall a past vein of 
thought, without having him instantly before me, 
and finding myself completely overcome.' ' The 
lonesomeness of the Roost, thus bereft, was in a 
measure, however, relieved by Ebenezer Irving, who 
took up his residence there, bringing with him his 
five daughters. 

In the fall of 1838, after he had in a way recovered 
the use of his faculties, Irving started to work out a 
plan that he had long cherished. It was a " History 
of the Conquest of Mexico" that was now begun, 
and some three months of fairly solid work had been 
put upon it when he learned that Prescott was mak- 
ing preparations for a work upon the same subject. 
He at once relinquished the plan in favor of the 
younger historian, an act of altruism not often 
paralleled in the annals of authorship. He at the 
same time offered Prescott his help, and the use of 
what materials he had at hand. " In at once yielding 
up the theme to you," he wrote, "I feel that I am but 
doing my duty in leaving one of the most magnificent 



IOO LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

themes in American history to be treated by one who 
will build up from it an enduring monument in the 
literature of our country." 

That the impulsive act thus prompted by his 
native generosity involved a considerable sacrifice — 
a greater sacrifice than Prescott would have been 
likely to accept had he understood it — appears from 
a letter written at Madrid five years afterwards, 
when Prescott's work was published, with a prefatory 
acknowledgment of his indebtedness to Irving for 
surrendering the subject. "When I gave it up to 
him, I in a manner gave him up my bread, for I de- 
pended upon the profit of it to recruit my waning 
finances. I had no other subject at hand to supply 
its place. I was dismounted from my cheval de 
bataille, and have never been completely mounted 
since. Had I accomplished that work, my whole 
pecuniary situation would have been altered. . . . 
When I made the sacrifice, it was not with a view to 
compliments or thanks, but from a warm and sudden 
impulse. I am not sorry for having made it. Mr. 
Prescott has justified the opinion I expressed at the 
time, that he would treat the subject with more close 
and ample research than I should probably do, and 
would produce a work more thoroughly worthy of 
the theme." 

The letter containing this confession derives an 
added interest from the fact that it contains also a 



WASHINGTON IRVING ioi 

sketch of Irving's proposed treatment of the subject. 
As an indication of the author's methods in dealing 
with historical material, the letter is of the utmost 
significance for the understanding of the principles 
which guided him in his literary work, and must be 
quoted from at some length. "I should not have 
had any preliminary dissertation on the history, 
civilization, etc., of the nations, as I find such disser- 
tations hurried over, if not skipped entirely, by a 
great class of readers, who are eager for narrative and 
action. I should have carried on the reader with 
the discoverers and conquerors, letting the newly 
explored countries break upon him as it did upon 
them; describing objects, places, customs, as they 
awakened curiosity and interest, and required to be 
explained for the conduct of the story. The reader 
should first have an idea of the superior civilization 
of the people from the great buildings and temples 
of stone and lime that brightened along the coast, 
and ' shone like silver.' He should have had vague 
accounts of Mexico from the people on the sea- 
board, from the messengers of Montezuma. . . . 
Every step, as he accompanied the conquerors on 
their march, would have been a step developing 
some striking fact, yet the distance would still have 
been full of magnificent mystery. He should next 
have seen Mexico from the mountains, far below 
him, shining with its vast edifices, its glassy lakes, 



I0 2 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

its far-stretching causeways, its sunny plain, sur- 
rounded by snow-topped volcanoes. Still it would 
have been vague in its magnificence. At length he 
should have marched in with the conquerors, full of 
curiosity and wonder, on every side beholding objects 
of novelty, indicating a mighty people, distinct in 
manners, arts, and civilization from all the races of 
the Old World. ... My intention also was, to 
study the different characters of the dramatis per- 
sona, so as to bring them out in strong relief, and 
to have kept them, as much as possible, in view 
throughout the work." This description makes us 
feel that there might have been room in our litera- 
ture for Irving's " Conquest of Mexico" as well as 
Prescott's, and makes us almost regret that he did 
not pursue his original purpose and complete the 
work. 

Feeling the need of remunerative work of some 
kind, Irving made an arrangement with the " Knick- 
erbocker" magazine for a monthly article. The 
first of these articles appeared in March, 1839, and 
they were continued for two years. Most of them 
were collected, many years afterwards, into the 
volume called "Wolfert's Roost." In 1840, he pub- 
lished a letter in the " Knickerbocker " on the sub- 
ject of international copyright, then before Congress, 
in which he took a strong stand for the principle of 
national honesty in dealing with the literary property 



WASHINGTON IRVING 103 

of foreigners. "I have seen," he said, "few argu- 
ments advanced against the proposed act, that ought 
to weigh with intelligent and high-minded men; 
while I have noticed some that have been urged, so 
sordid and selfish in their nature, and so narrow in 
the scope of their policy, as almost to be insulting to 
those to whom they are addressed." But his hope 
that the proposed measure would be carried by "an 
overwhelming if not unanimous vote" was, as we 
know, doomed to disappointment. He could hardly 
have anticipated that it would still be a full half- 
century before the growth of enlightenment would 
bring about the performance of that act of elementary 
justice. 

The ensuing two years (1 840-1 841) were spent 
peacefully at Sunnyside, varied by occasional visits 
to New York and to the country-houses of his friends. 
The literary work done included the "Knicker- 
bocker" articles, a sketch of the life of Goldsmith, 
and a sentimental biography of Margaret Davidson, 
a precocious child whose early death had greatly 
afflicted him. A letter from this period gives a 
pleasant picture of the life at Sunnyside. "Some 
of our neighbors are here only for the summer, hav- 
ing their winter establishments in town; others 
remain in the country all the year. We have frequent 
gatherings at each other's houses, without parade 
or expense, and I do not know when I have seen 



104 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

more delightful little parties, or more elegant little 
groups of females. We have, occasionally, excellent 
music, for several of the neighborhood have been well 
taught, have good voices, and acquit themselves 
well both with harp and piano: and our parties 
always end with a dance. We have picnic parties 
also, sometimes in some inland valley or piece of 
wood, sometimes on the banks of the Hudson, 
where some repair by land, and others by water." 

VIII 

The tranquil existence thus described came to an 
end, for the time being, when Irving received, early 
in 1842, the wholly unexpected news of his nomina- 
tion for the post of Minister to Spain. He had at 
last settled down to work upon the life of Washing- 
ton, long contemplated and many times postponed. 
The appointment came from President Tyler, and 
was made at the solicitation of Daniel Webster, then 
Secretary of State. The thought of a new term of 
exile was very agitating to him, but his hesitation 
in accepting the post was overborne by the evident 
wishes of his friends, by the cordial public approval 
given to the appointment, and by the consideration 
that he could work upon the life of Washington 
almost as well in Madrid as at Sunnyside. He wrote 
to Webster accepting the position, invited three 



WASHINGTON IRVING 



io5 



young men to go with him as his diplomatic family, 
made a round of farewell visits in New York and 
Washington, placed his business affairs in the hands 
of his nephew Pierre, and sailed for Liverpool early 
in April. Just before he left he was called upon to 
preside at the Dickens dinner in New York. He 
could not get out of it, and his distress at the pros- 
pect was amusing. "I shall certainly break down," 
was his invariable remark whenever the subject 
was mentioned. He did break down, in a sense, for 
he discarded the manuscript speech he had prepared, 
and his few extempore remarks were interrupted by 
so much disconcerting applause, that he sat down 
after making one of the briefest post-prandial speeches 
on record. 

The journey to Spain was made in leisurely fash- 
ion, and Irving did not reach Madrid until late in 
July. On his way, he attended a levee in London, 
and was presented to the young Queen and the 
Prince Consort. His old friends, among them 
Rogers and Moore, did much to make his stay in 
England pleasant. In Paris, he made the customary 
diplomatic calls, in company of the American min- 
ister, Lewis Cass, and was presented to the King 
at Neuilly. He had been too long a man of the 
world to be dazzled by the society which was opened 
to him by his diplomatic office, and his thoughts 
were ever turned homeward. "I am too old a 



106 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

frequenter of the theatre of life to be much struck 
with novelty, pageant, or stage effect, and could 
willingly have remained in my little private loge at 
Sunnyside, and dozed out the rest of the perform- 
ance." Reaching Madrid he took possession of the 
residence of his predecessor and was soon comfort- 
ably installed, together with the members of his suite. 
The Spain to which he now returned after an 
absence of more than twelve years was in a condi- 
tion of political turmoil. Since the date of his 
former sojourn, Ferdinand VII. had died, confirm- 
ing the succession to his infant daughter Isabella, 
with her mother as guardian and regent. Immedi- 
ately thereafter, the Carlist insurrection had broken 
out, plunging the country into civil war. In 1840, 
after seven years of struggle, the forces of Don 
Carlos had been defeated, the Queen regent Maria 
Christina had been forced to resign and had taken 
refuge in Paris to plot against the government, while 
Joaquin Baldomero Espartero, the leader of the 
constitutional party, had become regent in her stead. 
At the time of Irving's arrival, Espartero was at the 
head of the government, for the young Queen was 
still more than two years from her majority. This 
was a delicate situation for a diplomatist to deal 
with. Irving was accredited to the Queen, and he 
solved the problem by presenting his letters to Espar- 
tero to be transmitted by the latter to his sovereign. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 107 

An audience with the Queen followed, in the royal 
apartments which still showed marks of the violence 
done the year before, when a midnight attack had 
been made upon the palace, and an attempt, insti- 
gated by Maria Christina, to kidnap the royal chil- 
dren had been frustrated by the Queen's trusty hal- 
berdiers. By his recognition of Espartero as the 
actual head of the government, Irving broke a sort 
of diplomatic deadlock, and set a precedent which 
was followed by his diplomatic colleagues. 

Finding his first quarters far too noisy, he moved, 
after a few weeks, into the principal apartment of 
a great house belonging to a bachelor nobleman. 
Here he had quiet, and spaciousness, and lovely 
views, and here he settled down definitely for the 
remainder of his stay. He expected to have little 
to do in an official way, and to find abundant leisure 
for work upon the biography of Washington. These 
expectations were not realized. He became too 
deeply interested in Spanish affairs, which seemed 
to "have an uncertainty hanging about them worthy 
of the fifth act of a melodrama," and his duties 
were found to be more exacting than he had sup- 
posed they would be. Only a few chapters of the 
biography were written during the entire four years 
of his residence in Madrid. 

If his literary work suffered at this time, his 
correspondence made up for the loss in part. His 



108 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

official despatches were so interesting that when 
they were received at the Department of State, 
Webster put aside all his other correspondence until 
he had read them. His private letters, also, became 
much longer than they had been before, and were 
filled with detailed descriptions of the brilliant and 
dramatic scenes with which he was associated. They 
contain many charming passages, of which the 
following, written to his sister, may be taken as an 
example. "I can imagine you smiling in the serene 
wisdom of your elbow chair, at the picture of a row 
of dignified diplomatic personages, some of them well 
stricken in years, and all of them sage representa- 
tives of governments, bowing with profound rever- 
ence, and conjuring up nothing to say to a couple 
of little girls. However, this is all the whipt syllabub 
of diplomacy. If I were to take you into one of our 
conferences with Cabinet Ministers, then you would 
know the solid wisdom required by our station; but 
this department of our official functions is a sealed 
book!" He was not always, however, as discreet as 
this would indicate, and one of these letters ends 
with the caution that its recipient a must not let it 
get to Mr. Webster's ears how communicative I am 
to her on these subjects; he may not be disposed to 
admit her into our secrets." And still another letter 
closes with the injunction to "keep it strictly among 
yourselves in the family." 



WASHINGTON IRVING 109 

Early in 1843, Irving suffered from a recurrence 
of the malady which had frequently disabled him 
in the past. It took the form of an inflammation of 
the skin, affecting the lower limbs, and made him 
almost a cripple. Under these circumstances, the 
long hours during which he was required to stand 
upon ceremonial occasions proved very irksome to 
him, and he sometimes had to excuse himself from 
attendance. He went to Paris in the fall, for medical 
treatment and change of scene, but returned with 
slight improvement. He continued to be tormented 
by this affliction for about two years, and his delight 
was boyish when he at last got the better of his 
malady. "One cannot help being puffed up a 
little on having the use of one's legs," was his playful 
comment on his recovery. 

Espartero, who was called to Barcelona to suppress 
an insurrection in 1842, and again the following 
year, was nearing the end of his power; his enemies 
got the upper hand, and he was driven from office 
and into exile in the summer of 1843. Meanwhile, 
the insurgent forces gathered around the capital, 
which they soon occupied, forming a provisional 
government. This revolution resulted in reestab- 
lishing the moderados, or aristocracy, in power, the 
recall of the Queen Mother, and the declaration by 
the Cortes of the Queen's majority at the age of 
thirteen, a year earlier then had been provided by 



no LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the will of the late King. The revolutionary weeks 
were a time of great excitement in Madrid, and 
Irving's correspondence gives a graphic account of 
the situation. His chief concern was for the safety 
of the young Queen, and when affairs seemed most 
critical, he took the lead in a diplomatic intervention 
for her protection. But the revolution turned out 
to be comparatively bloodless, and the new order 
of things was soon established. 

The return of Maria Christina in the spring of 
1844 was the occasion of a great demonstration at 
Aranjuez, whither the court went to meet her. Four 
years earlier, she had left with execrations ringing 
in her ears; she now came back to receive the plau- 
dits of the whole kingdom. It was a great day. "In 
an open plain, a short distance from the road, was 
pitched the royal tent— very spacious, and decorated 
with fluttering flags and streamers. Three or four 
other tents were pitched in the vicinity, and there 
was an immense assemblage of carriages, with 
squadrons of cavalry, and crowds of people of all 
ranks, from the grandee to the beggar." In the 
evening there was a reception to the diplomatic 
corps. But the American Minister's ankles ached 
when he went to bed that night. 

Even Irving's optimism was not proof against the 
disillusionments of the diplomatic life. Men in his 
position learn many secrets, and get close to the 



WASHINGTON IRVING in 

actual motives which impel political action — motives 
very different from those which are thrown out as 
sops to the public. He writes: "I am wearied and at 
times heartsick of the wretched politics of this coun- 
try, where there is so much intrigue, falsehood, 
profligacy, and crime, and so little of high honor 
and pure patriotism in political affairs. The last 
ten or twelve years of my life . . . has shown me 
so much of the dark side of human nature, that I 
begin to have painful doubts of my fellow-men, and 
look back with regret to the confiding period of my 
literary career, when, poor as a rat, but rich in 
dreams, I beheld the world through the medium of 
my imagination, and was apt to believe men as good 
as I wished them to be." He wrote this in one of his 
melancholy moods, when he was left alone by the 
departure of the last of the three young men who had 
come with him to Spain, and had served as attaches 
of the legation. There was now nothing left to con- 
sole him in his home but the distant mountain pros- 
pects and the nightingales that sang in the garden. 

He went to Barcelona in June, where the court 
was sojourning, to deliver letters from President Tyler 
to the Queen. The place delighted him, and the 
rich fertility of the country must have been a re- 
freshing contrast to the arid environment of Madrid. 
Fifteen years earlier, he had passed a few days there, 
and his mind was filled with the thought of all that 



112 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

had happened since. While at Barcelona, he re- 
ceived a despatch from Washington, granting him the 
leave of absence which he had asked for on account 
of his health. At the end of July, he set out for 
Paris, going by way of Marseilles, Avignon, the 
Rhone, and the Saone. He paid a pleasant visit to 
Louis Philippe, who gave him reminiscences of his 
backwoods days in America, and expressed a wish 
to visit the United States again. The journey was 
extended from Paris to London, and to Birmingham, 
where he remained for some weeks with his sister, 
Mrs. Van Wart. He returned to Madrid in Novem- 
ber, to find Narvaez "quite the lord of the ascendant" 
and society at its gayest and most magnificent. 

One incident of this journey is so charming as a 
revelation of the author's personality that it must be 
given as told in his correspondence. It was on the 
steamer from Barcelona to Marseilles, and he was 
writing a letter in the cabin, a beautiful young Span- 
ish woman just opposite him at the table. He 
started to write a description of her, for which he 
had to make observations now and then, and this 
naturally attracted her attention. The rest of the 
story may be told in his own words. 

"She had caught my eye occasionally, as it glanced 
from my letter toward her. ' Really, Senor/ said 
she, at length, with a smile, 'one would think you 
were a painter, taking my likeness.' I could not 



WASHINGTON IRVING 113 

resist the impulse. ' Indeed,' said I, 'lam taking it; 
I am writing to a friend the other side of the world, 
discussing things that are passing before me, and I 
could not help noting down one of the best specimens 
of the country that I had met with.' A little banter- 
ing took place between the young lady, her husband, 
and myself, which ended by my reading off, as well 
as I could into Spanish, the description I had just 
written down. It occasioned a world of merriment, 
and was taken in excellent part. The lady's cheek, 
for once, mantled with the rose. She laughed, shook 
her head, said I was a very fanciful portrait painter; 
and the husband declared that, if I would stop at 
St. Filian, all the ladies in the place would crowd to 
me to have their portraits taken — my pictures were 
so flattering. I have just parted with them. The 
steamship stopped in the open sea, just in front of 
the little bay of St. Filian; boats came off from shore 
for the party. I helped the beautiful original of the 
portrait into the boat, and promised her and her 
husband, if ever I should come to St. Filian, I would 
pay them a visit. The last I noticed of her, was a 
Spanish farewell wave of her beautiful white hand, 
and the gleam of her dazzling teeth as she smiled 
adieu. So there's a very tolerable touch of romance 
for a gentleman of my years." 

The greater part of 1845 may be passed over 
briefly. It found Irving a participant in many 



114 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

festivities, for he was again in excellent physical 
condition, and keenly alive to the interest of exist- 
ence. His sixty-second birthday discovers him "in 
fine health, in the full enjoyment of all my faculties, 
with my sensibilities still fresh, and in such buxom 
activity that, on my return home yesterday from the 
Prado, I caught myself bounding up-stairs three 
steps at a time, to the astonishment of the porter, 
and checked myself recollecting that it was not the 
pace befitting a Minister and a man of my years." 
Irving's personal appearance in these later years is 
thus described by an unnamed correspondent of 
Charles Dudley Warner: "He had dark gray 
eyes; a handsome straight nose, which might per- 
haps be called large; a broad, high, full forehead, 
and a small mouth. I should call him of medium 
height, about five feet eight and a half to nine inches, 
and inclined to be a trifle stout. There was no 
peculiarity about his voice; but it was pleasant and 
had a good intonation. His smile was exceedingly 
genial, lighting up his whole face and rendering it 
very attractive ; while, if he were about to say anything 
humorous, it would beam forth from his eyes even 
before the words were spoken. As a young man his 
face was exceedingly handsome, and his head was 
well covered with dark hair; but from my earliest 
recollection of him he wore neither whiskers nor 
moustache, but a dark brown wig, which, although 



WASHINGTON IRVING 115 

it made him look younger, concealed a beautifully 
shaped head." 

Toward the close of 1845 he made up his mind 
to return to private life, and his resignation was sent 
to Washington in December. Some weeks before 
this he had started on a brief visit to Paris, by way 
of Bordeaux, Nantes, and the Loire to Orleans. 
The journey was unexpectedly lengthened, and ex- 
tended to England, where the Oregon question was 
the subject of much stormy discussion. The author 
of " Astoria" knew something about this question, 
and he thought that his presence in England might 
be of service to his country at what seemed to be a 
critical juncture. He believed the American claim 
to the disputed territory to be a just one, and blamed 
the English government for its unwillingness to 
accept the generous compromise we had suggested. 
"By neglecting to close with our offer, and to ne- 
gotiate upon the basis of the forty-ninth parallel, the 
British diplomatists have left the question at the 
mercy of after influences, through the malignancy of 
the British press and the blustering of our candidates 
for popularity, to get up prejudice and passion on both 
sides, and to make diplomatic negotiation almost hope- 
less." He returned to Madrid in March, 1846, to find 
the Narvaez government tottering to its fall. A month 
later, Narvaez had followed Espartero into exile. 

When he returned to Madrid, Irving expected that 



Ii6 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the acceptance of his resignation would be awaiting 
him, but it did not come for some weeks. Mean- 
while, in anticipation of his departure, he had turned 
over his domestic establishment to Mr. Albuquer- 
que, the Brazilian Minister, with whom he lived en 
jamille during the remaining months of his stay. 
When the news came that his resignation had been 
acted upon and his successor named, it was ac- 
companied by news of the outbreak of the Mexican 
War, which he regretted deeply, although his feeling 
about it, when once begun, was what his feeling had 
been in 1812, at the time of our ill-advised war with 
England. He expressed the hope that Taylor's 
early victories would be speedily followed up by a 
magnanimous adjustment of the dispute. Late in 
July, his successor appeared upon the scene and took 
over the legation, leaving Irving free to follow his 
own devices. After taking formal leave of the Queen, 
and informal leave of his friends, he reached London 
in August, and sailed for America in September. 
He landed in Boston on the eighteenth, and the next 
day found him with his relatives at Sunnyside. 

IX 

Irving's first concerns when he again found him- 
self beneath his own roof-tree, were to build an 
addition to the cottage, and to work at the revision 



WASHINGTON IRVING 117 

of his books, with an eye to the publication of a 
uniform collective edition. For once, his speculative 
investments had proved successful, and he found 
money coming in to him from unexpected quarters 
and in unexpected amounts. The new plans for 
Sunnyside could safely be counted upon to absorb 
these receipts, but a recurrence of the old malady 
prevented him from going on very rapidly with the 
alterations. "It is some little annoyance to me," 
he writes, "that I cannot get about and find some 
means of spending that sum of money which you tell 
me Pierre has been making for me. I think he takes 
advantage of my crippled condition, which prevents 
my going on with my improvements; and I fear, if I 
do not get in a disbursing condition soon, he will 
get the weather gage of me, and make me rich in 
spite of myself. " In spite, however, of this relative 
prosperity, he thought he might have to return to the 
practice of law, and went so far as to secure a desk 
in the office of John Treat Irving, his brother. The 
literary activities of 1847, aside from the work of 
revision already mentioned, took the shape of some 
dallying with manuscript material (unearthed from 
his trunks) concerned with the Moorish chronicles, 
and of much hard work upon the life of Wash- 
ington, which at last showed signs of coming into 
being. 
The early months of 1848 were spent in New 



Ii8 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

York, partly as the guest of John Jacob Astor. 
When Mr. Astor died in March of that year, it was 
found that Irving had been appointed one of the 
executors of the estate. The business of settlement, 
and the negotiations for the republication of his 
works, filled his time very completely for a while, 
although society and the opera were not lacking by 
way of diversion. The publishing arrangement, 
made with George P. Putnam, was liberal in its 
terms, and covered both the old books and whatever 
new ones the author might write. It was destined 
to prove highly advantageous to both parties, and 
brought to Irving eighty-eight thousand dollars dur- 
ing the remaining eleven years of his life. 1 At the 
time when it was made, curious to relate, the works 
of the most successful of American authors had been 
long out of print, and were by no means easy to ob- 
tain. The generation that had sprung up since the 
days of " Knickerbocker" and "The Sketch-Book" 
knew Irving as a name, but had only the most frag- 
mentary acquaintance with his writings. The new 
edition, which it took the next two years to produce, 
remedied this defect, and made Irving one of the 
standard authors whose works every library must 



i This is the amount stated by Charles Dudley Warner in his biog- 
raphy. But George Haven Putnam, writing in 1909 of Irving's business 
dealings with his publishers, says that the royalties secured during these 
eleven years amounted to between $200,000 and $250,000. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 



119 



include as a matter of course. This publishing 
arrangement put an end to his plan of resorting to 
the law for a livelihood. Upon this subject, George 
Haven Putnam has the following anecdote : 

"The son of John Treat Irving told me, as his 
father had told him, that Washington came into his 
brother's office actually dancing with glee. ' Brother 
John,' he said, 'here is a fool of a publisher willing 
to pay me a thousand dollars a year for doing nothing. 
I shall not bother myself further with the troubles of 
the law'; and (said John the second) 'my uncle in 
his satisfaction actually kicked over his desk.'" 

Besides the books which have thus far been ac- 
counted for in this biography, as they were written 
from year to year, the new edition included the "Life 
of Goldsmith" and "Mahomet and His Successors." 
Twice before had Irving prepared a sketch of Gold- 
smith's life, and now, stimulated by the new material 
found in Forster's biography, he expanded his earlier 
work into the fascinating volume which has given 
delight to many thousands of readers. Of all the 
writers of the past, Goldsmith was the one with 
whom he felt the closest kinship, and he acknowl- 
edged the relationship by inserting Dante's apos- 
trophe to his master Virgil into the preface. 

"Tu se' lo mio maestro, e'l mio autore; 
Tu se' solo colui da cui io tolsi 
Lo bello stile che m' ha fatto onore." 



120 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

But when he was charged with servile imitation of 
his master, he became indignant, and declared that 
he had never imitated anybody. The " Mahomet" 
was a by-product of his studies of the Moorish 
dominion in Spain, and, like the "Goldsmith," was 
an earlier sketch expanded into a work of consider- 
able dimensions. 

We thus see that the summer of 1850 found Irving's 
literary work completed, save for the "Life of Wash- 
ington," the collection of reprinted articles called 
"Wolfert's Roost," and the posthumous volume of 
"Spanish Papers." It had, moreover, received its 
definitive revision, was before the public in uniform 
shape, and in the hands of a publisher who could be 
trusted to make the most of it in the interests of all 
the parties concerned. All that the author feared 
now was that he might not live to complete his 
magnum opus. "If I can only live to finish it, I 
would be willing to die the next moment," were his 
words. His relations with his publisher were the 
most pleasant possible. He wrote to Mr. Putnam in 
1852, saying: "I never had dealings with any man, 
whether in the way of business or friendship, more 
perfectly free from any alloy. That those dealings 
have been profitable, is mainly owing to your own 
sagacity and enterprise. . . . You called [my books] 
again into active existence, and gave them a circula- 
tion that I believe has surprised even yourself. In 



WASHINGTON IRVING 121 

rejoicing at their success, my satisfaction is doubly 
enhanced by the idea that you share in the benefits 
derived from it." 

The years now flowed serenely on, and the happy 
life at Sunnyside was now and then varied by a little 
journey — to Saratoga for the waters, to Washington 
for an examination of the archives, to Niagara Falls 
or the Shenandoah Valley for change of scene and 
the companionship of friends. There were annoy- 
ances now and then, the chief of them being the 
invasion of his river bank by the railway, with the 
" infernal alarum" of its steam whistles. There 
were the usual bores, who forced themselves upon 
him and who wrote him letters which he was too 
courteous not to answer, but which made him feel 
as if " entangled in a network of cobwebs." And 
there were also periods of illness, with their note of 
warning that a septuagenarian must not expect too 
much of life. 

When the news of Louis Napoleon's infamous sup- 
pression of French liberty reached Irving he was not 
a little excited, although not moved to any marked 
expression of indignation. When he read of the Span- 
ish marriage, he indulged in reminiscences. " Louis 
Napoleon and Eugenie Monti jo, Emperor and Em- 
press of France ! — one of whom I have had a guest 
at my cottage on the Hudson ; the other, whom, when 
a child, I have had on my knee at Granada ! " It was 



122 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

curious indeed. When these words were written, 
Irving had just returned from Washington, where he 
had spent several weeks early in 1853, and where he 
had witnessed a change of administration — "the two 
Presidents arm in arm, as if the sway of an immense 
empire was not passing from one to the other" — 
which must have stood in his mind in striking con- 
trast with the recent change in the administration of 
the French government. Kossuth's visit to New 
York also interested him greatly. He conceived a 
deep admiration for the man, although he was unable 
to see in the Hungarian cause any reason for political 
interference on the part of our government. A note 
about another visitor startles us for a moment. " We 
had a visit from Mr. James, the novelist, and his 
family." It takes a little time to realize that Aga- 
memnon had a predecessor of the same name. 

On the third of April, 1853, Irving came a of full 
age." He was naturally affected by reaching his 
seventieth milestone, as may be seen in these quota- 
tions from his letters: "I could never have hoped, 
at such an advanced period of life, to be in such full 
health, such activity of mind and body, and such 
capacity for enjoyment as I find myself at present." 
"I can scarcely realize that I have indeed arrived at 
the allotted verge of existence, beyond which all is 
special grace and indulgence. . . . While I have 
still a little music in my soul to be called out by any 



WASHINGTON IRVING 123 

touch of sympathy, while I can enjoy the society of 
those dear to me, and contribute, as they tell me, to 
their enjoyment, I am content and happy to live on. 
But I have it ever present to my mind that the 
measure of my days is full and running over; and I 
feel ready at any moment to lay down this remnant 
of existence, with a thankful heart that my erratic 
and precarious career has been brought to so serene 
a close, among the scenes of my youth, and sur- 
rounded by those I love." 

Early in 1855, the volume named "Wolfert's 
Roost" was published. It was made up mainly of 
the papers he had contributed in 1 840-1 841 to the 
" Knickerbocker Magazine," although there were 
besides a few unprinted sketches. Soon thereafter, 
the first volume of the "Life of Washington" made 
its appearance. The second volume followed late 
that year, while 1856, 1857, and 1859, were the 
respective dates of the remaining three. It cost a 
heroic struggle to complete the work, and at times 
it seemed doubtful if the vital spark could be kept 
alight long enough to permit the author to write 
"finis" after the fifth volume. But his dearest wish 
was realized, and the printed book was in his hands 
some months before his death. 

The "Life of Washington " is the most extensive 
of Irving's works, and the one which cost him the 
greatest pains. It may almost be described as the 



124 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

work of his whole life, to which he was dedicated 
from that day of childhood when Washington's 
hand rested upon his head. It lacked something of 
the freshness and brilliancy of his earlier writings, 
for it was the product of a jaded intellect, and its 
subject-matter was not altogether grateful. The 
battles bothered him not a little, for he had no 
special knowledge of strategy, and Washington's 
later administrative career seemed to him repellently 
arid, for he did not have the instinct of the political 
historian. But it was, on the whole, a solid perform- 
ance, and accomplished its author's aim. That 
aim was expressed in his correspondence from time 
to time, and may be illustrated by these extracts 
from a letter to Tuckerman: "My great labor has 
been to arrange these facts in the most lucid order, 
and place them in the most favorable light, without 
exaggeration or embellishment, trusting to their own 
characteristic value for effect." "I have availed 
myself of the license of biography to step down 
occasionally from the elevated walk of history, and 
relate familiar things in a familiar way; seeking to 
show the prevalent passions, and feelings, and humors 
of the day, and even to depict the heroes of Seventy- 
six as they really were — men in cocked hats, regi- 
mental coats, and breeches; and not classic warriors, 
in shining armor and flowing mantles, with brows 
bound with laurel, and truncheons in their hands." 



WASHINGTON IRVING 125 

To supplement these statements of Irving's pur- 
pose, we may give a passage from Prescott's letter 
to the author, after reading four of the five volumes. 
"I have never before fully comprehended the char- 
acter of Washington; nor did I know what capabili- 
ties it would afford to his biographer. Hitherto we 
have only seen him as a sort of marble Colossus, 
full of moral greatness, but without the touch of 
humanity that would give him interest. You have 
known how to give the marble flesh color, that 
brings it to the resemblance of life . . . Yet, I see, 
like your predecessors, you are not willing to mar 
the beautiful picture, by giving Washington the in- 
firmity of temper which common report assigns to 
him." The closing sentence of this comment touches 
upon the chief weakness of the biography. It is a 
literary production, rather than a realistic one, and 
the artistic idealization of its subject is not altogether 
conformable to the facts. 

The panic of 1857 affected Irving in the sense 
that it made business difficulties for his publisher, 
who had lost heavily upon some of his ventures. 
This brought about an accounting and a new agree- 
ment. During the nine years that the old agreement 
had lasted, no less than three hundred and fifty 
thousand volumes of his works had been sold, and 
Irving's receipts had far exceeded his most sanguine 
expectations. The sale had been a steadily in- 



126 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

creasing one, and his royalties for the year 1857 
alone had been approximately twenty-five thousand 
dollars. By the terms of the new agreement, he 
purchased the plates of all his books, and the pub- 
lisher thereafter acted only as agent for their sale. 
This resulted in further substantial returns to the 
author during the rest of his life, and to his estate 
for many years afterwards, although the returns nat- 
urally fell off as the books lapsed from copyright, 
and became the prey of unscrupulous publishers. 

The last two years of Irving's life present a melan- 
choly picture of infirmity and suffering. Early in 
1858 an obstinate catarrhal affection deadened his 
hearing, and made a serious draft upon his vital- 
ity. It developed into an untimely drowsiness, vio- 
lent coughing at night, and an asthmatic condition 
which resulted in much distress, and at last ended 
his life. His faculties, however, remained almost 
unimpaired to the end, and even when most de- 
pressed, his talk preserved the old-time cheerfulness 
and charm. Says his biographer: "It was very re- 
markable, that at this very time, when filled with 
dread of the night, and anxious that all should sit 
up very late to shorten it as much as possible, he 
was never more delightful in conversation than dur- 
ing those long evenings. The excitement of his 
mind seemed to increase his powers, just as persons 
in a fever are often more brilliant than at any other 



WASHINGTON IRVING 127 

time. All the interesting scenes of his life seemed to 
pass before him — a thousand anecdotes of persons 
and things of which you had never heard, related in 
the most graphic manner, and filled, at times, with 
all his old fun and humor. Scenes and quotations 
from favorite authors were constantly presenting 
themselves, and were given with a depth of feeling 
that added wonderfully to their effect." He was sur- 
rounded, of course, by everything that could give 
comfort to a man in his condition, and watched over 
with loving tenderness by the members of his house- 
hold. He had once described his home as "well 
stocked with womenkind, without whom an old 
bachelor is a forlorn, dreary animal," and in these 
last days he appreciated more fully than ever before 
what a comfort it was to live in "a house full of 
nieces" solicitous for his well-being. 

He received an occasional visitor even in his last 
days, and the words of one of these, who was at 
Sunnyside only three weeks before the end, shall 
give us one last glimpse of Irving in the flesh. The 
visitor was Theodore Tilton, who was destined to 
survive him by nearly half a century. "Mr. Irving 
is not so old-looking as one would expect who knew 
his age. I fancied him as in the winter of life; I 
found him only in its Indian summer. He came 
down-stairs, and walked through the hall into the 
back parlor, with a firm and lively step that might 



i 2 8 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

well have made one doubt whether he had truly 
attained his seventy-seventh year! He was suffer- 
ing from asthma, and was muffled against the damp 
air with a Scotch shawl, wrapped like a great loose 
scarf around his neck; but as he took his seat in the 
old arm-chair, and, despite his hoarseness and troub- 
led chest, began an unexpectedly vivacious conversa- 
tion, he almost made me forget that I was the guest 
of an old man. ... As I came away, the old gentle- 
man bundled his shawl about him, and stood a few 
moments on the steps. A momentary burst of sun- 
shine fell on him through the breaking clouds. In 
that full light he looked still less like an old man 
than in the dark parlor by the shaded window. . . . 
I wish always to remember him as I saw him at 
that last moment." It is a pleasant memory, and 
we will keep it for our own. 

Irving died November 28, 1859, soon after retir- 
ing for the night. There had been a beautiful sun- 
set that evening, which had left him entranced. It 
was the last sunset of his life, for he died, instantly 
and with no more than a passing pang, soon after 
his head had touched the pillow. The next morning, 
when his death became known, New York put on 
mourning, adjourned its public business, and hung 
its flags at half-mast. The funeral took place De- 
cember 1. The services were performed according 
to the rites of the Episcopal church (of which he 



WASHINGTON IRVING 129 

had been a communicant since 1848) in Christ 
Church, Tarry town. The burial was in the cemetery 
near by, on a hillside between the valley of Sleepy 
Hollow and the Hudson. Thither he had brought 
from New York, six years before, the remains of 
his family for reinterment in a spot of which they 
might never become dispossessed, and there he had 
marked out, by his mother's side, the space for his 
own resting-place. 

Irving's place in literature is secure. It depends 
in part, no doubt, upon his pioneer position, upon 
the fact that he was the first of American authors to 
achieve wide-spread celebrity. But that fact alone 
would not account for his lasting fame. There were 
Americans before him who made a fair start toward 
literary distinction, and whose names are now only 
dusty memories. That Irving's name is much more 
than this must be chiefly accounted for by the fact 
that he was, absolutely considered, one of the best 
writers who in his time were using the English lan- 
guage for literary expression. His matter was almost 
wholly of the past, and of the imagined rather than 
the real past, while his manner was that of the 
classical writers of the eighteenth century. But it 
was a manner that clothed its matter with a diction 
of unfailing charm, and bestowed fresh interest upon 
the themes with which it was occupied. It touched 
nothing that it did not adorn, to use once more the 



13° 



LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 



words applied by Dr. Johnson to Irving's exemplar. 
With so much to be said in his praise, there is little 
justification for the reproach that he had no message 
for the age, that his mind was untroubled by the 
ferment of contemporary thought, that his outlook 
was retrospective and not prescient. Prophecy was 
not his metier, and he was the last person in the 
world to don robes that he could not wear gracefully 
and with comfort. 

In one respect, indeed, he exercised an active and 
wholesome influence upon the thought of his time. 
The half-century that followed our political separa- 
tion from the mother-country was fast leading us 
toward a moral estrangement as well. There was 
much soreness of feeling on both sides, which poli- 
ticians and journalists alike (after their kind) found 
it to their interest to aggravate rather than to allay. 
During this period of strained feeling, Irving's 
influence was a potent agency in the process of 
healing and reconciliation. Not consciously exerted 
toward this end — he was too thoroughly an artist for 
that — its ministry was made all the more effective 
by its indirection; by subtler methods than those of 
argument or homily his influence helped American 
readers to regain something of their lost sympathy 
for their parent stock, aroused in English readers a 
new respect for the people oversea who were, after all, 
their kinsmen. "The Sketch-Book" and "Brace- 



WASHINGTON IRVING 131 

bridge Hall" did not a little to substitute sympathy 
and mutual understanding for the old-time acrimo- 
nious hostility. The only attacks of any bitterness 
that were ever made upon Irving came from a few 
lewd fellows of the baser sort who found a personal 
grievance in his conciliatory attitude toward Eng- 
land and his willingness to forget the unpleasant 
past. 

His writings everywhere give evidence of his 
literary conscience and artistic sincerity. If external 
evidence of these qualities were needed it might 
easily be adducd from the many passages in his 
correspondence which reveal the writer at work, 
and show with what painstaking effort his books 
were made. For one thing, he knew his limitations, 
and kept within them. He was urged to write a 
novel, but instinct warned him against such an 
attempt, and he expressed the belief that his short 
stories would be oftener re-read than any novel he 
could have written. This was probably true, for 
his short stories not only created that species of 
composition in American literature, but provided a 
standard of workmanship that has hardly been 
surpassed since. His own conception of the short 
story is worth quoting: "I consider a story merely 
as a frame on which to stretch my materials. It is 
the play of thought, and sentiment, and language; 
the weaving in of characters, lightly, yet expressively 



132 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

delineated; the familiar and faithful exhibition of 
scenes in common life; and the half-concealed vein 
of humor that is often playing through the whole, — 
these are among what I aim at, and upon which I 
felicitate myself in proportion as I think I succeed.' ' 
It is a good deal of a programme, but Irving carried 
it out successfully a number of times, and in at least 
two instances had the further triumph of doing what 
few story-writers have ever done, for "Sleepy Hol- 
low' ' and "Rip Van Winkle" are stories that have 
attached themselves as veritable legends to the spots 
in which they are enacted, and have almost achieved 
the dignity of folk-lore. 

Of Irving as a public character little need be 
added to what these pages have already said. He 
filled with dignity and discretion the offices which 
he accepted; he would doubtless have brought the 
same capabilities to those which he declined. De- 
spite his many years abroad, he was always thorough- 
ly American in spirit, although he did not find it 
necessary to emphasize his nationality by abusing 
Englishmen and other foreigners. This test of pa- 
triotism he was pitifully unable to meet. That he 
took a genuine and intelligent interest in the pub- 
lic affairs of his country goes without saying. We 
may find a sort of confession of political faith in a 
letter of 1838, which gives us the following passages : 
"As far as I know my own mind, I am thoroughly 



WASHINGTON IRVING 133 

a republican, and attached, from complete convic- 
tion, to the institutions of my country; but I am a 
republican without gall, and have no bitterness in 
my creed. I have no relish for puritans either in 
religion or politics, who are for pushing principles 
to an extreme, and for overturning everything that 
stands in the way of their own zealous career. . . . 
Ours is a government of compromise. We have sev- 
eral great and distinct interests bound up together, 
which, if not separately consulted and severally 
accommodated, may harass and impair each other." 
This is about as near as he ever comes to touching 
upon the great moral agitation which we now see to 
have been the most significant factor in American 
history during the last quarter-century of Irving's 
life. We may wish that he might have declared 
himself for the right in the sacred cause of human 
freedom, but we may not fairly censure him for his 
failure to sympathize with what must have seemed 
to him little more than an exhibition of blind fana- 
ticism opposed to rancorous prejudice. 

The character of Washington Irving the man, as 
distinguished from the author, should emerge as a 
fairly distinct picture from the preceding narrative of 
his career. He appears as one of the most lovable 
personalities in the history of our literature, or of 
any literature. He is endeared to us by the purity of 
his life, by the tenderness of his affection for family 



I 3 4 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

and friends, by the sweetness of his disposition. He 
preferred to discover the virtues of his fellow-men 
rather than to expose their faults, and, although he 
indulged in satire at times, it was of the gentlest 
sort, free from sting, and without a touch of cynicism. 
Extremely sensitive himself, he could not bear to 
inflict pain upon others, and in this respect no one 
ever answered more fully to Newman's definition 
of a gentleman. Of malice and envy there were no 
traces in his composition; he rejoiced wholly in the 
good fortune of others, and sympathized with them 
sincerely in their reverses. His temperamental 
optimism made him a cheering presence wherever 
he went, and when he was laid to his final rest, those 
who had loved and now mourned him felt that their 
loss was in a measure softened by the memory that 
still remained to them as a lasting possession. 






0^ 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



The injunction to " hitch your wagon to a star" 
is probably the most familiar of all the phrases of 
E merson's mintage that have passed into general 
currency. The homely metaphor with its ideal ap- 
plication is typical of the man who stamped the 
counsel with his personality. A certain bust of 
Emerson is said to look like a Yankee when viewed 
from one angle, and like a Greek when viewed from 
another. " Plato come back to turn a Yankee 
phrase" is Mr. John Vance Cheney's way of ex- 
pressing this duality, and Professor Woodberry ex- 
presses it by saying: "He is a shining figure as on 
some Mount of Transfiguration, and he was a 
parochial man." We are not yet so far removed 
from the time and the scene of his earthly sojourn 
that the memory of the man in his habit as he lived 
has become dimmed, and are yet far enough, from 
the vantage-point of another century, to be sure that 
he was one of the greatest of Americans, and that 
Matthew Arnold, when he called Emerson's writing 
"the most important work done in prose, in our 

13s 



136 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

language, during the present century" stated the 
estimate that is likely to hold good. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of a family of eight 
children, all of whom he outlived, was born in Boston, 
May 25, 1803. In a brief biography like the present, 
little account can be taken of his ancestry, although 
the subject calls for closer consideration than usual. 
It has been said that a child's education should begin 
with his grandfather; in the case of Emerson it is 
evident that the education began many generations 
further back. Both directly and collaterally, his 
antecedents were clergymen, and the clerical stamp 
was impressed upon him at birth. His first American 
ancestor was Thomas Emerson, who came to New 
England in the great Puritan emigration, and settled 
in Ipswich about 1835. He pursued the useful call- 
ing of a baker, but his son Joseph became a minister, 
and from that son Ralph Waldo was descended, 
through Edward, Joseph, and two Williams, suc- 
cessively, all of them ministers but Edward. William 
Emerson the father of Ralph Waldo, after studying 
divinity at Harvard College, and preaching for several 
years in the town of Harvard, was in 1799 called to 
the First Church of Boston. The Unitarian ferment 
was already at work in the churches; the bonds of 
Puritan dogma were everywhere being strained, and 
when they were finally burst, the Puritan temper 
emerged from its bondage with no impairment of the 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 137 

old seriousness, but with the gain of new qualities of 
sweetness and elasticity. William Emerson was sus- 
pected of latitudinarianism, and his preaching seems 
to have been infused with the liberal ideas that were 
then in the air, although he did not go so far as to 
break with the old associations. He died in 181 1, 
leaving a widow, five boys from two to ten years of 
age, and a baby girl. 

Emerson's mother, whose maiden name was 
Ruth Haskins, came of a good Boston family. She 
was described by Dr. Frothingham as a woman "of 
great patience and fortitude, of the serenest trust in 
God, of a discerning spirit, and a most courteous 
bearing, one who knew how to guide the affairs of 
her own house, as long as she was responsible for 
that, with the sweetest authority, and knew how to 
give the least trouble and the greatest happiness after 
that authority was resigned.'' The death of her 
husband left the family in straitened circumstances, 
although the church voted to pay a stipend to the 
widow for seven years, and for three years gave her 
the use of the parish house rent-free. She outlived 
her husband forty-two years, dying in 1853, at the 
age of eighty-four, in Ralph's house, where she had 
lived since his marriage. In her management of the 
family of children left on her hands at the death of 
William Emerson, she was greatly aided by her 
sister-in-law, Mary Moody Emerson, a woman of 



138 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

strong character and remarkable intellectual attain- 
ments. The manuscript writings left by her exhibit 
passages that might be taken, both in manner and 
thought, for her famous nephew's, and Dr. Holmes 
goes so far as to aver that "far more of Mr. Emerson 
is to be found in this aunt of his than in any other of 
his relations in the ascending series." 

Boarders were taken into the Emerson household 
to eke out the family expenses, and the children 
shared in the housework, did the chores, and drove 
the family cow to its daily pasture at a paddock just 
beyond the Common. But this did not mean that 
schooling was neglected. Education was taken seri- 
ously in those days, even for children, who were not 
coddled by kindergartens, but set to work upon the 
rudiments of solid knowledge as soon as they had 
learned to toddle. Ralph had been sent to school 
at two, and when less than three his father had ex- 
pressed surprise that he could not yet read very well. 
He entered the Boston Latin School before he was 
ten, and it was during his first year there that he 
wrote to his Aunt Mary the following account of a 
typical day of his life. "Friday, 9th, I choose for 
the day of telling what I did. In the Morning I rose, 
as I commonly do, about five minutes before six. 
I then help Wm. in making the fire, after which I set 
the table for Prayers. I then call mamma about 
quarter after six. We spell as we did before you 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 139 

went away. I confess I often feel an angry passion 
start in one corner of my heart when one of my 
Brothers gets above me, which I think sometimes 
they do by unfair means, after which we eat our 
breakfast ; then I have from about quarter after seven 
till eight to play or read. I think I am rather in- 
clined to the former. I then go to school, where I 
hope I can say I study more than I did a little while 
ago. I am in another book called Virgil, and our 
class are even with another which came to the Latin 
School one year before us. After attending this 
school, I go to Mr. Webb's private school, where I 
write and cipher. I go to this place at eleven and 
stay till one o'clock. After this, when I come home 
I eat my dinner, and at two o'clock I resume my 
studies at the Latin School, where I do the same 
except in studying grammar. After I come home I 
do mamma her little errands if she has any; then I 
bring in my wood to supply the breakfast room. I 
then have some time to play and eat my supper. 
After that we say our hymns or chapters, and then 
take our turns in reading Rollin, as we did before you 
went. We retire to bed at different times. I go at a 
little after eight, and retire to my private devotions, 
and then close my eyes in sleep, and there ends the 
toils of the day." It is a pleasant picture of a simple 
and well-ordered household, by no means without its 
lesson for the present time. 



140 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

This direct transcript of the boy's life, sketched 
with naive particularity, finds its complement in the 
essay on " Domestic Life," which shows us how these 
conditions appeared in the reflective consciousness 
of the man. "Who has not seen, and who can see 
unmoved, under a low roof, the eager, blushing boys 
discharging as they can their household chores, and 
hastening into the sitting-room to the study of to- 
morrow's merciless lesson, yet stealing time to read 
one chapter more of the novel hardly smuggled into 
the tolerance of father and mother — atoning for the 
same by some passages of Plutarch or Goldsmith; 
the warm sympathy with which they kindle each 
other in school-yard, or barn, or wood-shed, with 
scraps of poetry or song, with phrases of the last 
oration or mimicry of the orator; the youthful criti- 
cism, on Sunday, of the sermons; the school decla- 
mation, faithfully rehearsed at home, sometimes to 
the fatigue, sometimes to the admiration of sisters; 
the first solitary joys of literary vanity, when the 
translation or the theme has been completed, sitting 
alone near the top of the house; the cautious com- 
parison of the attractive advertisement of the arrival 
of Macready, Booth, or Kemble, or of the discourse 
of a well-known speaker, with the expense of the 
entertainment; the affectionate delight with which 
they greet the return of each one after the early 
separations which school or business requires; the 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 141 

foresight with which, during such absences, they 
hive the honey which opportunity offers, for the ears 
and imagination of the others; and the unrestrained 
glee with which they disburden themselves of their 
early mental treasures when the holidays bring them 
again together? What is the hoop that holds them 
stanch ? It is the iron band of poverty, of necessity, 
of austerity, which, excluding them from the sensual 
enjoyments which make other boys too early old, has 
directed their activity into safe and right channels, 
and made them, despite themselves, reverers of the 
grand, the beautiful, and the good. Ah, short-sighted 
students of books, of nature, and of man! too happy 
could they know their advantages, they pine for free- 
dom from that mild parental yoke ; they sigh for fine 
clothes, for rides, for the theatre, and premature free- 
dom and dissipation which others possess. Woe to 
them if their wishes were crowned ! The angels that 
dwell with them, and are weaving laurels of life for 
their youthful brows, are Toil and Want and Truth 
and Mutual Faith.' 7 The ideal of wholesome youth 
which is set forth in this passage was realized in 
countless New England households of the last 
century; it is still realized in favored spots there and 
elsewhere, the extent to which the modern American 
family has forsaken it marks the depth of our descent 
to a lower plane. 
This is not a plea for the advantage of poverty on 



142 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

its own account. Extreme poverty is deadening 
rather than quickening in its effect, but frugality is 
another matter, and the pleasures that come with 
straitened means, that are achieved as the result of 
effort, are the only ones that bring with them their 
full value. Beyond certain narrow limits, depriva- 
tion becomes merely irksome, and the Emerson 
household doubtless found itself beyond those limits 
at times, as, for example, when one winter overcoat 
had to do for Ralph and his brother Edward. But 
there is no note of complaint in the echoes that come 
to us from that far-off boyhood; there is rather the 
note of brave determination to make the best of what 
life had to offer, and, as readers of Emerson well 
know, the memory of his youthful hardships left no 
residuum of bitterness in his consciousness. 

It is not difficult to imagine this delicate youth 
fresh from the sweet home atmosphere, this " spiritual 
looking boy in blue nankeen," in his character as a 
schoolboy. Dr. Garnett puts it by saying that "he 
was not a schoolboy, but a boy at school." He did 
not play very much, he was not even the owner of a 
sled, and he had no part in the rough-and-tumble 
encounters held on the Common between his own 
schoolmates and the invading forces from Round 
Point. The most exciting incident of his schooldays 
came one day during the war with England, when 
it was rumored that a British fleet was on its way to 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 143 

Boston harbor. Benjamin Apthorp Gould, father of 
the great astronomer, was then headmaster, and he 
took the boys with him to help in throwing up de- 
fenses on Noddle's Island. "The whole school 
went. I went, but I confess I cannot remember a 
stroke of work that I or my school-fellows accom- 
plished.' ' A more serious consequence of the war 
was the great increase in the cost of living in Boston. 
This sent the Emerson family to Concord for the 
last year of the struggle, where they found a home 
with the minister, Dr. Ezra Ripley, who was Ralph's 
grandfather-in-law, and whom he afterwards de- 
scribed as belonging to "the rear guard of the great 
camp and army of the Puritans, which, however, in 
its last days declining into formalism, in the heyday 
of its strength had planted and liberated America." 
We get our first glimpse of Emerson as a clergy- 
man when his baby sister died in 18 14, and Ralph, 
aged eleven, conducted the family worship the next 
morning. Mr. Sanborn reports that Mrs. Ripley 
long afterwards told her admiration of "the grave 
and sweet composure with which he read the Script- 
ure and prayed" upon that occasion. We may dis- 
cern Emerson the future writer in various reports 
from his schoolday period. At eleven, he was trans- 
lating passages from the "book called Virgil" into 
quite tolerable couplets, and at work upon "Fortus," 
an epic! He delivered "original poems" on exhibi- 



i 4 4 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

tion days, and ornamented his letters with rhymes. 
Brother Edward, then at boarding-school, was the 
recipient of this paraphrase of a tragedy familiar to 
the nursery. 

"So erst two brethren climb'd the cloud capp'd hill, 
Ill-fated Jack and long-lamented Jill, 
Snatched from the crystal font its lucid store, 
And in full pails the precious treasure bore. 
But ah! by dull forgetfulness oppress'd 
(Forgive me, Edward) I've forgot the rest." 

These lines are quoted, not because they have any in- 
trinsic merit, but to provide a contrast for the picture 
of the boy conducting family prayers. A boy may be 
both good and precocious without being a prig, and 
Ralph was by no means lacking in the fun-loving 
instincts and the frank exuberance of normal boys 
everywhere. 

II 

Emerson entered Harvard College in 1817, and 
was graduated in regular course four years later. 
It was the tradition of his family that a college edu- 
cation must be had, no matter what the cost in 
economy and deprivation. His expenses were small, 
and they were largely met by his own exertions. He 
began as " President's freshman," which means that 
he was a sort of errand-boy to the president, and had 
his lodgings free. He was a waiter in the college 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 145 

commons; he taught a country school in the winter 
holidays; he was a beneficiary of certain funds set 
apart for the needs of poor and deserving students. 
The Harvard of his time was hardly more than a 
boy's school, and looked after the welfare of its 
students with paternal solicitude. One of his letters 
mentions "a new law that no student shall go to the 
theatre, on penalty of ten dollars' fine at first offence, 
and other punishments afterwards." The president 
was Kirkland, and among the professors were Ed- 
ward Everett, Edward Channing, and George Tick- 
nor. Emerson's fellow-students included Josiah 
Quincy, C. W. Upham, George Ripley, W. H. 
Furness, and E. S. Gannett. Everett, who was 
professor of Greek, had long been one of the boy's 
idols, and was the most considerable influence in 
molding his thought during these college years. He 
wrote thus of him in after years: " Germany had 
created criticism in vain for us until 1820, when 
Edward Everett returned from his five years in 
Europe, and brought to Cambridge his rich results, 
which no one was so fitted by natural grace and the 
splendor of his rhetoric to introduce and recom- 
mend. . . . There was an influence on the young 
people from the genius of Everett which was almost 
comparable to that of Pericles in Athens. He had 
an inspiration which did not go beyond his head, 
but which made him the master of elegance." 



146 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Aside from this, and one or two other sources of 
special inspiration, Emerson did not find much to 
appeal to him in the routine of college life. He hated 
mathematics, and greatly preferred his own readings 
of Plato to the formal study of the eighteenth-century 
philosophy which was given him to chew upon. But 
his was "the instinct which leads the youth who has 
no faculty for mathematics, and weeps over the im- 
possible Analytical Geometry, to console his defeats 
with Chaucer and Montaigne, with Plutarch and 
Plato at night." If he neglected his studies, he did 
enough of good desultory reading to make up for it. 
He read the authors above named, and the English 
dramatists, and Sterne, and Pascal, and a host of 
others. And he was busy with his note-books, and 
the writing of college exercises and poems. He took 
prizes for essays on "The Character of Socrates" 
and "The Present State of Ethical Philosophy," and 
another prize for declamation. He stood midway in 
rank among the class of fifty-nine with which he was 
graduated, and was assigned the class-day poem, 
although not until the honor had been declined by 
seven others. 

A boy whom he tutored for a while said of him 
long afterwards that "he seemed to dwell apart, as 
if in a tower, from which he looked upon everything 
from a loophole of his own." He took long country 
walks, which helped to confirm him in his habit of 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 147 

solitude. His Aunt Mary had spoken of "the wild 
and fruitless wish that you could be disunited from 
travelling with the souls of other men," and he went 
far toward its realization, even in these boyish days 
at college. A sensitive diffidence kept him apart 
from his fellows, and this condition was made more 
marked by his hesitancy of speech and his con- 
sciousness of the possession of tell-tale cheeks. He 
was, nevertheless, sought out more and more by his 
more studious associates, and became a leading spirit 
in the various literary societies. But conviviality 
was not one of his attributes, and when the wine 
went round he "grew grave with every glass" in- 
stead of becoming excited in proportion to his pota- 
tions. All the time he felt keenly the semi-dependent 
position of his family, and was anxious for the time 
to come when he might do more for its support. "It 
appears to me the happiest earthly moment my most 
sanguine hopes can picture, if it should ever arrive, 
to have a home, comfortable and pleasant, to offer 
to mother; in some feeble degree to pay her for the 
cares and woes and inconveniences she has so often 
been subject to on our account alone." The modest 
ambition stated in this letter to his brother William 
was amply realized in after years, when for nearly 
a score of years the mother's home was with the 
son. 
After his graduation, Emerson turned to teaching, 



148 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

and spent three years at the task. His brother Wil- 
liam had started a school for girls in Boston two 
years before, and Ralph now joined him in his work. 
For the first two years, he acted as assistant, and 
then, upon William's departure to Europe, where he 
was to study divinity at Gottingen, the younger 
brother was left in sole charge. He did not like the 
work. One reason was found in his shyness. "I 
was nineteen, had grown up without sisters, and in 
my solitary and secluded way of living, had no 
acquaintance with girls. I still recall my terrors at 
entering the school; my timidities in French, the 
infirmities of my cheek, and my occasional admira- 
tion of some of my pupils — absit invidia verbo — and 
the vexation of spirit when the will of the pupils was 
a little too strong for the will of the teacher. " Thus 
he wrote long afterwards. At the time, he expressed 
himself with petulant vigor in a letter to a classmate. 
"To judge from my own happy feelings, I am fain 
to think that since commencement a hundred angry 
pens have been daily dashed into the sable flood to 
deplore and curse the destiny of those who teach. 
Poor, wretched, hungry, starving souls! How my 
heart bleeds for you! Better tug at the oar, dig the 
mine, or saw wood; better sow hemp or hang with 
it than sow the seeds of instruction." Yet a teacher 
he remained, in some sense, and under his own con- 
ditions, for the rest of his life, and as late as 1873 he 






RALPH WALDO EMERSON 149 

said that there never was a time when he would not 
have accepted a professorship at Harvard. 

During these years of teaching, his thought fre- 
quently played truant, fixing itself upon what were 
to remain the chief subjects of its contemplation. 
"My teaching was partial and external. I was at 
the very time writing every night, in my chamber, 
my first thoughts on morals and the beautiful laws of 
compensation and of individual genius, which to 
observe and illustrate have given sweetness to many 
years of my life. I am afraid no hint of this ever 
came into the school, where we clung to the safe and 
cold details of languages, geography, arithmetic, and 
chemistry. " The following comment upon the politi- 
cal situation dates from this teaching period, and 
shows that he regarded public affairs as a fit subject 
for the application of philosophical principles. "I 
find myself a little prone to croaking of late — partly 
because my books warn me of the instability of 
human greatness, and I hold that government never 
subsisted in such perfection as here. Except in the 
newspapers and the titles of office, no being could be 
more remote, no sound so strange. Indeed, the only 
time when government can be said to make itself seen 
and felt is at our festivals, when it bears the form 
of a kind of general committee for popular amuse- 
ments. . . . Will it not be dreadful to discover that 
this experiment, made by America to ascertain if 



150 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

men can govern themselves, does not succeed; that 
too much knowledge and too much liberty make 
them mad?'' These words were written on the eve 
of Independence Day, 1822, when the halcyon politi- 
cal weather of the Era of Good Feeling was beginning 
to show portents of a coming change. 

It was, perhaps, the dissatisfaction he felt with 
teaching, in addition to the touch of morbid senti- 
ment frequently found in the youthful habit of too 
much introspection, that caused Emerson to fill his 
journal for 1822 with such despondent words as these: 
" In twelve days I shall be nineteen years old, which 
I count a miserable thing. Has any other educated 
person lived so many years and lost so many days? 
I do not say acquired so little, for by an ease of 
thought and certain looseness of mind I have perhaps 
been the subject of as many ideas as many of mine 
age. But mine approaching maturity is attended 
with a goading sense of emptiness and wasted capa- 
city; with the conviction that vanity has been content 
to admire the little circle of natural accomplish- 
ments, and has travelled again and again the nar- 
row round, instead of adding sedulously the gems of 
knowledge to their number. Too tired and too 
indolent to travel up the mountain path which leads 
to good learning, to wisdom and to fame, I must be 
satisfied with beholding with an envious eye the 
labourious journey and final success of my fellows, 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 151 

remaining stationary myself, until my inferiors and 
juniors have reached and outgone me. . . . My 
infant imagination was idolatrous of glory, and 
thought itself no mean pretender to the honours of 
those who stood highest in the community, and 
dared even to contend for fame with those who are 
hallowed by time and the approbation of ages. It 
was a little merit to conceive such animating hopes, 
and afforded some poor prospect of the possibility of 
their fulfilment. This hope was fed and fanned by 
the occasional lofty communications which were 
vouchsafed me with the Muses' Heaven, and which 
have at intervals made me the organ of remarkable 
sentiments and feelings which were far above my 
ordinary train. And with this lingering earnest of 
bitter hope (I refer to the fine exhilaration which 
now and then quickens my day) shall I resign every 
aspiration to belong to that family of giant minds 
which live on earth many ages and rule the world 
when their bones are slumbering, no matter whether 
under a pyramid or a primrose? No, I will yet a 
little while entertain the angel." 

He is quite as hard upon his emotional as upon his 
intellectual life, for the self-examination goes on to 
the following effect: "Look next from the history of 
my intellect to the history of my heart. A blank, my 
lord. I have not the kind affections of a pigeon. 
Ungenerous and selfish, cautious and cold, I yet wish 



152 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

to be romantic; have not sufficient feeling to speak a 
natural, hearty welcome to a friend or stranger, and 
yet send abroad wishes and fancies of a friendship 
with a man I never knew. There is not in the whole 
wide Universe of God (my relation to Himself I do 
not understand) one being to whom I am attached 
with warm and entire devotion, — not a being to 
whom I have joined fate for weal or woe, not one 
whose interests I have nearly and dearly at heart; 
— and this I say at the most susceptible age of man. 
Perhaps at the distance of a score of years, if I then 
inhabit this world, or still more, if I do not, these will 
appear frightful confessions; they may or may not, 
— it is a true picture of a barren and desolate soul." 
These vaporings need not be taken very seriously; 
it required much less than the indicated score of 
years to make the mood which they depict a very old, 
unhappy, far-off thing in the serene later life of the 
man whose youth had given them vent. 

In 1823, the Emerson family removed to what was 
then the suburban town of Roxbury, where Ralph 
sought to put himself "ona footing of old acquaint- 
ance with Nature, as a poet should," and where 
moonlight wanderings supplied his brain with " sev- 
eral bright fragments of thought." The success of 
the school had improved the family circumstances and 
now William was departing for Germany to study 
divinity at Gottingen, Edward was about to be 









RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 53 

graduated from Harvard, and Charles was just get- 
ting ready to enter. The scholarly instincts of Ralph 
— who preferred to be called Waldo from this time 
on — were again stimulated, and he began to plan for 
his own divinity studies. "The sight of broad 
vellum-bound quartos, the very mention of Greek 
and German names, the glimpse of a dusty, tugging 
scholar, will wake you up to emulation for a month' ' 
— this is a note from the year in question. He was 
going in for divinity because it was the family tradi- 
tion. He had misgivings about the profession, but 
was determined to give it a chance. "When I have 
been at Cambridge and studied divinity,'' he wrote 
at the beginning of 1823, "I will tell you whether I 
can make out for myself any better system than 
Luther or Calvin, or the liberal besoms of modern 
days." A year later he writes in his journal as fol- 
lows: "I am beginning my professional studies. In 
a month I shall be legally a man. And I deliberately 
dedicate my time, my talents, and my hopes to the 
Church. Man is an animal that looks before and 
after; and I should be loth to reflect at a remote 
period that I took so solemn a step in my existence 
without some careful examination of my past and 
present life." 

The introspective habit still rules him strongly, 
for we find him going on to indulge in a severe 
searching of his conscience. "I cannot dissemble 



154 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

that my abilities are below my ambition. And I 
find that I judged by a false criterion when I meas- 
ured my powers by my ability to understand and to 
criticize the intellectual character of another. For 
men graduate their respect, not by the secret wealth, 
but by the outward use; not by the power to under- 
stand, but by the power to act. I have, or had, a 
strong imagination, and consequently a keen relish 
for the beauties of poetry. . . . My reasoning 
faculty is proportionably weak, nor can I ever hope 
to write a Butler's Analogy or an Essay of Hume. 
Nor is it strange that with this confession I should 
choose theology, which is from everlasting to ever- 
lasting 'debateable ground.' For, the highest species 
of reasoning upon divine subjects is rather the fruit 
of a sort of moral imagination, than of the ' Reason- 
ing Machines,' such as Locke and Clarke and David 
Hume. ... In Divinity I hope to thrive. I inherit 
from my sire a formality of manner and speech, but 
I derive from him, or his patriotic parent, a passionate 
love for the strains of eloquence. I burn after the 
aliquid immensum infinitumque which Cicero desired. 
What we ardently love we learn to imitate. My un- 
derstanding venerates and my heart loves that cause 
which is dear to God and man — the laws of morals, 
the Revelations which sanction, and the blood of 
martyrs and triumphant suffering of the saints which 
seal them. ... I cannot accurately estimate my 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 155 

chances of success, in my profession, and in life. 
Were it just to judge the future from the past, they 
would be very low. In my case, I think it is not. 
I have never expected success in my present employ- 
ment. My scholars are carefully instructed, my 
money is faithfully earned, but the instructor is little 
wiser, and the duties were never congenial with my 
disposition. Thus far the dupe of Hope, I have 
trudged on with my bundle at my back, and my eye 
fixed on the distant hill where my burden would 
fall." 

Emerson had begun his theological studies in an 
informal way some time before he gave up teaching. 
In January, 1825, he closed the school, thus separat- 
ing himself (although not quite for good) from what 
he called the class of "day-laborers and outcasts of 
every description, including school-masters." His at- 
titude toward the family profession at the time when 
he was preparing to take it up in earnest may be 
still further illustrated by the following passage: 
"I am blind, I fear, to the truth of a theology which I 
can't but respect for the eloquence it begets, and for 
the heroic life of its modern, and the heroic death of 
its ancient, defenders. I acknowledge it tempts the 
imagination with a high epic (and better than epic) 
magnificence, but it sounds like nonsense in the ear 
of understanding." Just before going back to the 
college quarters he had left in 1821, he struck this 



156 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

balance of the accounts of the four intervening years. 
"I have learned a few more names and dates; addi- 
tional facility of expression; the gauge of my own ig- 
norance, the sounding-places and bottomless depths. 
I have inverted my inquiries two or three times upon 
myself and have learned what a sinner and what a 
saint I am. My cardinal vice of intellectual dissipa- 
tion — sinful strolling from book to book, from care 
to idleness — is my cardinal vice still; is a malady 
that belongs to the chapter of incurables. I have 
written two or three hundred pages that will be of 
use to me. I have earned two or three thousand 
dollars, which have paid my debts and obligated my 
neighbors; so that I thank Heaven I can say, none 
of my house is the worse for me." 

Ill 

After a month as a student in Divinity Hall, his 
eyes gave out, and his general health was so unsat- 
isfactory that he resorted to the heroic remedy of 
hard work on a farm. The summer brought a 
marked improvement in his condition, and the 
following year found him alternating between school- 
teaching and the pursuit of his theological studies. 
In October, 1826, he was " approbated" to preach 
by the Middlesex Association of Ministers. On 
account of his poor eyesight, he was excused from 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 157 

the customary examinations. "If they had exam- 
ined me strictly," he said long afterwards to Mr. 
Sanborn, " perhaps they would not have let me 
preach at all." His determination to adhere to the 
clerical profession was strengthened by the defec- 
tion of his brother William, who had gone to Ger- 
many to continue his studies, had discovered that 
his beliefs were dissolving, had even sought Goethe's 
advice at Weimar, and was at last preparing to 
forsake theology and turn to the law. Waldo knew 
that this change of calling would grieve his mother, 
and he would not add to her grief by abandoning 
the ministry himself. At this time, the family was 
again living in Cambridge, where Charles was win- 
ning distinction as a student. Edward, who after 
his graduation had opened a school in Roxbury, 
had also failed in health, and was seeking to recover 
it in the Mediterranean. Robert, between Charles 
and Edward in age, was mentally defective and had 
been placed under careful guardianship away from 
home. 

Five days after his " approbation," Emerson 
preached his first sermon at Waltham, Massachu- 
setts. A month later, his health had become so 
precarious that he was advised to spend the winter 
in a warmer climate. His eyes still troubled him, 
he was afflicted with rheumatism, and his lungs 
showed symptoms of disease. November 25, 1826, 



158 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

he sailed for Charleston, South Carolina. Six 
months were spent in the South, mainly in Charles- 
ton and St. Augustine. He preached occasionally 
during his absence from home, but lived idly for the 
most part, and felt both bored and discouraged. The 
life of St. Augustine was not .exactly stimulating to 
work of any kind. "What is doing here? Noth- 
ing. It was reported in the morning that a man 
was at work in the public square, and all our family 
turned out to see him. . . . The Americans live 
on their cfhces; the Spaniards keep billiard tables, 
or, if not, they send their negroes to the mud to 
bring oysters, or to the shore to bring fish, and the 
rest of the time fiddle, mask, and dance. ... I 
stroll on the sea-beach, and drive a green orange over 
the sand with a stick. Sometimes I sail in a boat, 
sometimes I sit in a chair." His first impressions 
of the "peculiar institution" date from this sojourn. 
"A fortnight since I attended a meeting of the Bible 
Society. The treasurer of this institution is marshal 
of the district, and by a somewhat unfortunate ar- 
rangement, had appointed a special meeting of the so- 
ciety and a slave-auction at the same time and place, 
one being in the Government House, and the other 
in the adjoining yard. One ear, therefore, heard 
the glad tidings of great joy, while the other was 
regaled with, l Going, gentlemen, going!' and almost 
without changing our position we might aid in send- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 159 

ing the Scriptures into Africa, or bidding on ' four 
children without the mother,' who had been kid- 
napped therefrom. There is something wonderfully 
piquant in the manners of the place, theological or 
civil." 

On his way from St. Augustine back to Charles- 
ton, he had for a fellow passenger Achille Murat, 
Napoleon's nephew, who had a plantation at Talla- 
hassee, and who impressed him as "a type of heroic 
manners and sweet-tempered ability." Leaving 
his new friend at Charleston, Emerson made his 
way slowly northward, and returned home by way 
of Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. He 
was ten pounds to the good, and his health was much 
improved. He reached home in June, found that 
his mother had removed to Concord, but thought 
it best to establish himself in his old Divinity Hall 
quarters at Cambridge. 

This remained his home for over a year, although 
he was away from it much of the time, filling vari- 
ous engagements as a substitute, among others at 
the First Church of Boston, at Northampton, New 
Bedford, Lexington, and Concord, New Hampshire. 
It was at the place last-named that he met Ellen 
Louisa Tucker, who was afterwards to become his 
first wife. He had several offers looking toward a 
permanent settlement in a pastorate, but still felt 
so uncertain about his health that he declined them. 



160 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

In the summer of 1828, he had a great shock when 
his brother Edward, whose brilliant versatility had 
been the pride of the whole family, became violently 
insane. This was the end of an exceptionally prom- 
ising career, for, although he recovered his faculties 
after a few months, and was discharged from the 
asylum as cured, he was never again his old self. 
Renouncing his legal career, he went to Porto Rico, 
where he obtained a minor commercial appoint- 
ment, and died in 1834. 

During the year which ended thus tragically, 
Emerson had been leading, subject to occasional 
interruptions, a vegetative existence. His journal 
gives us the following record: "I deliberately shut 
up my books in a cloudy July noon, put on my old 
clothes and old hat, and slink away to the whortle- 
berry bushes, and slip with the greatest satisfaction 
into a little cow-path where I am sure I can defy 
observation. This point gained, I solace myself for 
hours with picking blueberries and other trash of 
the woods, far from fame behind the birch-trees. 
I seldom enjoy hours as I do these. I remember 
them in winter; I expect them in spring. I do not 
know a creature that I think has the same humor, 
or would think it respectable." When these words 
were written, there was a boy of eleven named Henry 
David Thoreau, growing up in Concord, who was 
probably then not old enough to share this " humor" 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 161 

of the solitary, but who in later years was to become 
one of Emerson's spiritual intimates. 

This year of semi-relaxation was a salutary period 
for the young philosopher, who began to "look less 
like a monument and more like a man" ; and who by 
preference sought the society of merry persons of 
" soap-bubble " conversation. In such company he 
forgot about the mouse in his chest, and could turn 
from it in the best of spirits to take up book or pen. 
His Aunt Mary was still his chief confidant, and his 
letters to her afford the clearest revelations of his 
state of mind. "If men would avoid that general 
language and general manner in which they strive 
to hide all that is peculiar, and would say only what 
was uppermost in their own minds, after their own 
individual manner, every man would be interesting. 
Every man is a new creation, can do something best, 
has some intellectual modes and forms, or a charac- 
ter the general result of all, such as no other agent in 
the universe has; if he would exhibit that, it must 
needs be engaging, must be a curious study to every 
inquisitive mind. ... A portion of truth, bright 
and sublime, lives in every moment to every man. 
It is enough for safety, though not for education." 
Thus early do we find his philosophy of extreme in- 
dividualism shaping itself in the mold. Dr. Hedge 
reports him as saying at this time: "Owe no con- 
formity to custom against your private judgment. 



1 62 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Have no regard to the influence of your example, 
but act always from the simplest motive.' ' 

Emerson's engagement to Miss Tucker was made 
in 1828, a week before Christmas. He had met her 
just a year earlier, but had seen her very little during 
the interval. Writing to his brother William to an- 
nounce the engagement, he said: "I thought I had 
got over my blushes and my wishes when now I 
determined to go into that dangerous neighborhood 
on Edward's account. But the presumptuous man 
was overthrown by the eyes and the ear, and sur- 
rendered at discretion. He is now as happy as it is 
safe in life to be. She is seventeen years old, and 
very beautiful, by universal consent." When he 
ingenuously told of his engagement to the guests at 
the Concord boarding-house where he was stopping, 
it occasioned so much interest that the company at 
once proceeded to celebrate the occasion by singing 
the hymn: 

"Blest are the sons of peace, 

Whose hearts and hopes are one, 
Whose kind designs to serve and please 
Through all their actions run." 

The bearings of this selection, in Captain Cuttle's 
immortal words, "lays in the application on it." 
The couple were married in September, 1829, and set 
up their home in Boston, where Emerson had already 
assumed the duties of his first (and last) pastorate. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 163 

It was on the nth of the March preceding that he 
had been ordained as the colleague of the Rev. Mr. 
Ware at the Second Church, successor to the Old 
North Church of the Mathers, now dedicated to a 
liberal theology that must have made Increase, and 
Cotton, and Samuel, turn in their graves. A few 
weeks afterward, Mr. Ware resigned his incumbency, 
and Emerson was left in sole charge. His mother 
and his brother Charles joined the couple in their 
Boston home, and all seemed well. But the child- 
wife already bore the seeds of mortal disease, and 
died in February, 1831, after less than a year and a 
half of wedded life. He had tried to save her by 
taking her south to escape the terror of a New Eng- 
land spring the year before, and was planning to 
repeat the journey the next year, when the end came 
and left him desolate. His journal from this time 
onward gives many evidences of his deep bereave- 
ment, and it was his habit, until his departure for Eu- 
rope, to make almost daily morning visits to her grave. 

The two sermons which Emerson delivered on the 
first Sunday after his ordination were devoted to an 
exposition of his conception of the function of preach- 
ing. "It is much addicted to a few words; it holds 
on to phrases when the lapse of time has changed 
their meaning. Men imagine that the end and use 
of preaching is to expound a text, and forget that 
Christianity is an infinite and universal law. . . . 



164 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

If any one hereafter should object to the want of 
sanctity of my style and the want of solemnity in 
my illustrations, I shall remind him that the lan- 
guage and the images of Scripture derive all their 
dignity from their association with divine truth, and 
that our Lord condescended to explain himself by 
allusions to every homely fact, and, if he addressed 
himself to the men of this age, would appeal to those 
arts and objects by which we are surrounded ; to the 
printing-press and the loom, to the phenomena of 
steam and of gas, to free institutions and a petulant 
and vain nation." The sermons preached by Emer- 
son during the three years of his pastorate, to the 
number of one hundred and seventy-one, remain in 
manuscript, only two having been printed. His biog- 
rapher says that they are chiefly characterized by the 
"absence of rhetoric," although a few years earlier 
rhetoric had seemed to the writer an indispensable 
adjunct of effective discourse. There is much con- 
temporary testimony to the effect that the sermons 
were simple, unconventional, and untheological, but 
full of an appealing charm which was heightened by 
the spiritual personality of the speaker. There were, 
of course, discordant voices in this chorus of appre- 
ciation, and one lady is on record as saying: " Waldo 
Emerson came last Sunday, and preached a sermon, 
with his chin in the air, in scorn of the whole human 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 165 

A minister has other things to do besides preach- 
ing, and Emerson was not altogether successful in 
doing them. He says of himself that he did not 
excel in "domiciliaries," and there is a story that a 
Revolutionary veteran, who, in his dying hour, had 
summoned the minister for the customary consola- 
tions, was so dissatisfied with the performance that 
he rose from his bed, saying: " Young man, if you 
don't know your business, you had better go home." 
He was not good at funerals, and even the sexton 
was disappointed at his conduct of the ceremonies. 
On the other hand, he acquired many interests 
outside of his church. He was a member of the 
Boston School Board and chaplain of the State 
Senate. He made anti-slavery speakers welcome in 
his pulpit, and took an active part in philanthropi- 
cal work. It was in connection with one of these 
interests, Father Taylor's Seaman's Mission, that 
M. D. Conway tells a well-known story. Some of 
Taylor's Methodist associates objected to his inter- 
course with a man who, being a Unitarian, was sure 
to go to "the place which a divine of Charles the 
Second's day said it was not good manners to men- 
tion in church." Taylor's reply was to the effect 
that if Emerson went there, he would change the 
climate, and emigration would set that way. 

Emerson was duly ordained to be a minister, but 
he was foreordained to be a seeker after truth, pre- 



1 66 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

pared to follow her whithersoever she might lead. 
It might have been predicted by any close observer 
that he would not long remain in formal commun- 
ion with any church, even with a church so little 
orthodox as that of the Unitarian Congregational- 
ists of New England. As a matter of fact, he oc- 
cupied his pulpit at the Second Church for a little 
over three years, and then, after some searchings of 
conscience, but with no sensational display and 
with no bitterness of feeling on either side, he sepa- 
rated himself from the clerical profession. This 
step was the outcome of a process of almost insensi- 
ble growth similar to that which, at a much later 
date, led Leslie Stephen to separate himself from 
the Church of England. He might have said in 
Stephen's very words, "I did not feel that the solid 
ground was giving way beneath my feet, but rather 
that I was being relieved of a cumbrous burden. I 
was not discovering that my creed was false, but 
that I had never really believed it." His progress 
toward religious emancipation may be easily traced 
during the decade preceding his abandonment of 
the pulpit. In his twentieth year he wrote: "An 
exemplary Christian of to-day, and even a minister, 
is content to be just such a man as was a good Roman 
in the days of Cicero, or of the imperial Antonines. 
Contentment with the moderate standard of pagan 
virtue implies that there was no very urgent necessity 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 167 

for Heaven's last revelation; for the laws of morality 
were written distinctly enough before, and philoso- 
phy had pretty lively dreams of the immortality of 
the soul." A few years later, he wrote: "I am curi- 
ous to know what the Scriptures do in very deed say 
about that exalted person who died on Calvary, but 
I do think it, at this distance of time and in the con- 
fusion of language, to be a work of weighing of 
phrases and hunting in dictionaries." When, in 
1832, he had come to the point of writing that "the 
best part of the man, I sometimes think, revolts 
most against his being a minister," and "I have 
sometimes thought that in order to be a good minister 
it was necessary to leave the ministry. The pro- 
fession is antiquated," it was clear that some sort 
of a crisis was at hand. 

The special reason for his resignation was found 
in the difficulty of satisfying his conscience respect- 
ing the rite of the Lord's Supper. One of his two 
printed sermons is that which he preached Septem- 
ber 9, 1832, upon this subject. He had previously 
presented this difficulty to the church, and various 
consultations had been held with a view to bridging 
it over in some way. It was proposed as a modus 
vivendi that he should continue to perform the rite, 
putting upon it his own construction, and making 
all the mental reservations he chose to, while the 
congregation should remain free to construe it in 



1 68 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the time-honored sense. But any such compromise 
was distasteful to Emerson, and he was confronted 
with the alternatives of placing himself in an insin- 
cere position and of resigning outright. That his 
decision was bound to be for the latter goes with- 
out saying, but it was not impulsively made, and he 
went up to the White Mountains for a while to think 
it over by himself. Shortly after his return from 
this season of self-communion, he preached the 
sermon above mentioned, explaining the reasons 
why he thought the observance of the rite inexpedi- 
ent. "The use of the elements, however suitable 
to the people and the modes of thought in the East, 
where it originated, is foreign and unsuited to affect 
us. The day of formal religion is past, and we are 
to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul. 
To commemorate by a form a religious teacher 
whose life was a protest against form was "to make 
vain the gift of God," was "to turn back the hand 
on the dial." Bringing his argument to a close, he 
said: "I have no hostility to this institution; I am 
only stating my want of sympathy with it. Neither 
should I have obtruded this opinion upon other peo- 
ple, had I not been called by my office to adminis- 
ter it. That is the end of my opposition, that I am 
not interested in it. I am content that it stand to 
the end of the world if it please men and please 
Heaven, and I shall rejoice in all the good it pro- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 169 

duces." Having spoken these simple words, he 
announced his resignation, which was subsequently 
accepted, with great reluctance, and with a provi- 
sion which continued the pastor's salary for a time. 
Of course, this step exposed Emerson to some sharp 
criticism, and it was suggested in some quarters 
that he must be insane. There will always be some 
people to think it insane for any man, for a mere 
matter of principle, to choose uncertainty and pov- 
erty in place of a comfortable income and an assured 
social position. How Emerson still felt toward the 
church he had left may be seen in the hymn begin- 
ning, 

"We love the venerable house 
Our fathers built to God," 

which he wrote the year afterwards for the ordina- 
tion of his successor. 

IV 

The double strain of the loss of his wife and the 
severance of his church relations affected Emerson's 
health rather seriously, and he determined to seek 
a change of scene. His brother Edward, who had 
come home for a short visit in the summer of 1832, 
was again in Porto Rico, and, as the event proved, 
Waldo had seen him for the last time. He at first 
thought of going to the West Indies to spend the 
winter with Edward, but, as he wrote to William in 



170 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

New York, "in a few hours the dream changed into 
a purpureal vision of Naples and Italy.' ' The 
household was consequently broken up, Charles 
remaining in Boston, and the mother going to live 
with a relative in Newton. Waldo wrote a letter of 
farewell to his former congregation, thanking them 
for "a thousand acts of kindness," and declining to 
accept any further continuance of the salary they 
had voted him. On Christmas, 1832, he sailed from 
Boston on a small trading brig, bound for the Medi- 
terranean, and landed at Malta early in February, 
after a voyage of about six weeks, and a diet consist- 
ing mainly of pork and beans. 

His stay in Europe lasted seven months. From 
Malta he went to Sicily, making the usual round; 
thence his itinerary took him through Italy, by way 
of Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan, 
then across the Simplon to Geneva, and to Paris 
near the end of June. The remaining summer 
weeks were spent in England and Scotland. It 
cannot be said that Emerson was an appreciative 
tourist. The saying that they change their skies but 
not their souls who cross the seas was peculiarly 
exemplified in his case, which shows us that a man 
may live too wholly in his own web of abstractions. 
He found Italy "the same world of cakes and ale;" 
he saw only the "same faces under new caps and 
jackets." "I am not very sure that I grow much 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 171 

wiser or any better for my travels. We put very 
different matters into the scales, but the balance 
never varies much. An hour in Boston and an hour 
in Naples have about equal value to the same per- 
son." "My own study is the best place for me, and 
there was always more fine society in my own little 
town than I could command." But he admits that 
"though travelling is a poor profession, bad food, 
it may be good medicine." These quotations im- 
press upon us the parochial aspect of his nature. 
There have not been many men of parts who could 
see Venice for the first time, and find nothing more 
to say of it than this: "It is a great oddity, a city 
for beavers, but to my thoughts a most disagreeable 
residence. You feel always in prison and solitary. 
It is as if you were always at sea. I soon had enough 
of it." 

What he wanted was intercourse with men and 
not with monuments. " I would give all Rome for 
one man such as were fit to walk here, and could 
feel and impart the sentiment of the place." But 
men were removed from him, on the Continent, by 
the barriers of speech, for Emerson had small ac- 
quaintance with the tongues, and the Bostonian 
French which he had taught to the young women 
in his brother's school was found to be curiously 
useless for communication with the foreigner. In 
Florence, however, he found Horatio Greenough, the 



172 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

American sculptor, who obtained for him an intro- 
duction to Landor. He visited the old Roman in 
his Fiesolan villa, and talked art, literature, and 
politics, with him. His report of Landor's opinions, 
as published afterwards in " English Traits," was 
not altogether agreeable to the subject, who claimed 
that he had been misreported. One unfortunate re- 
mark, "he pestered me with Southey," was found 
particularly offensive by Southey's warm-hearted 
friend, and long afterwards impelled Mr. Swinburne, 
as Landor's most zealous champion, to characterize 
Emerson in terms so abusive that Mr. Swinburne's 
warmest admirers find it difficult to condone them. 

The Italian churches did, indeed, arouse him to 
something like warmth of expression. He spoke 
with admiration of St. Peter's, and of the Florentine 
Duomo, "set down like an archangel's tent in the 
midst of the city." He asked, "Have the men of 
America never entered these European churches, 
that they build such mean edifices at home?" which 
seems a singular query for one whose puritanism 
was bred in the bone. He tried to imagine a form 
of service to accord with such surroundings. It 
should not be the colorless Protestant service, nor 
should it, like the Catholic, "show a priest trotting 
hither and thither, and bowing now on this side and 
now on that." But it should be a service in "good 
and manly taste," and one in which all should wor- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 173 

ship. One source of the strength of the Catholic 
church he clearly recognized and frankly appreci- 
ated. "How beautiful to have the church always 
open, so that every tired wayfaring man may come 
in and be soothed by all that art can suggest of a 
better world, when he is weary with this!" 

Emerson's month in Paris left him "not well 
pleased." It was "a loud modern New York of a 
place" without "the air of antiquity and history." 
He attended lectures at the Sorbonne, saw Mile. 
Mars in a new play by Delavigne, and dined with 
General Lafayette. Leaving Paris, he landed in 
London on a Sunday in July, found lodgings, and 
went straightway to service at St. Paul's. "Poor 
church" is his only comment upon this experience. 
He called on Coleridge at Highgate, who treated 
him to a monologue upon "the folly and ignorance 
of Unitarianism," and recited his latest poem as 
his visitor rose to go. He also called upon John 
Stuart Mill, who gave him a card to Carlyle. To 
meet Carlyle had long been Emerson's chief desire, 
although in 1833 Carlyle was nothing more than an 
anonymous essayist who was just then publishing 
a queer farrago of humorous philosophy, called 
"Sartor Resartus," in "Fraser's Magazine." But 
Emerson had discovered his "Germanic new-light 
writer" in the reviews before leaving home, although 
it was not until he was in Rome that he knew what 



174 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

name to attach to the personality who had so im- 
pressed him as a kindred spirit. Even in Edinburgh 
he had some difficulty in getting track of Carlyle 
and discovering his country retreat. At last, one 
day late in August, he drove out to Craigenputtock, 
and there took place what Dr. Garnett calls the 
most memorable meeting on a Scotch moor since 
Macbeth encountered the witches. The interest 
was mutual. Emerson wrote in his journal next 
day: "A white day in my years. I found the youth 
I sought in Scotland, — and good and wise and 
pleasant he seems to me, and his wife a most accom- 
plished agreeable woman. Truth and grace and faith 
dwell with them and beautify them. I never saw 
more amiableness than is in his countenance. " 
Carlyle's record of the meeting is that his visitor 
was "one of the most lovable creatures in himself 
we had ever looked on." The visit was for a day 
only, but it began a friendship that lasted as long 
as the two men lived. There never was a more 
striking illustration of the mutual attraction of di- 
verse natures. The two men were as far apart as 
the poles in many of their views. As Mr. Cabot 
says: "Had they been required respectively to define 
by a single trait the farthest reach of folly in a theory 
of conduct, Carlyle would have selected the notion 
that mankind need only to be set free and led to 
think and act for themselves, and Emerson the 






RALPH WALDO EMERSON 175 

doctrine that they need only to be well governed." 
But the sympathy of these men for each other rested 
upon a deeper than the intellectual basis, and each 
of them respected to the full the earnestness and 
sincerity of the other. 

A couple of days later, Emerson called upon 
Wordsworth at Rydal Mount. They talked of Amer- 
ica, which the poet feared was in a sad case, of Car- 
lyle, whom he thought " sometimes insane," and of 
Wordsworth's own work, which he illustrated by 
standing apart, and declaiming with great animation 
his three latest sonnets. A few days after this experi- 
ence, Emerson was in Liverpool, ready to set sail 
for home. He recorded in his journal the impressions 
made by his seven months' stay in Europe taken 
as a whole. "I thank the great God who has led 
me through this European scene — this last school- 
room in which He has pleased to instruct me — in 
safety and pleasure, and has now brought me to the 
shore, and to the ship that steers westward. He has 
shown me the men I wished to see, Landor, Cole- 
ridge, Carlyle, Wordsworth; He has thereby com- 
forted and confirmed me in my convictions. Many 
things I owe to the sight of these men. I shall judge 
more justly, less timidly, of wise men forevermore. 
To be sure, not one of these is a mind of the very 
first class; but what the intercourse with each of 
them suggests is true of intercourse with better men, 



176 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

— that they never fill the ear, fill the mind, no, it is 
an idealized portrait which always we draw of them. 
Upon an intelligent man, wholly a stranger to their 
names, they would make in conversation no deep 
impression, — none of a world-filling fame. They 
would be remembered as sensible, well-read, earnest 
men; not more. Especially are they all deficient — 
all these four, in different degrees, but all deficient — 
in insight into religious truth. They have no idea 
of that species of moral truth which I call the first 
philosophy. The comfort of meeting men of genius 
such as these is that they talk sincerely. They feel 
themselves to be so rich that they are above the 
meanness of pretension to knowledge which they 
have not, and they frankly tell you what puzzles 
them." 

V 

Emerson sailed from England September 4, 1833, 
and arrived in New York after a five weeks' passage. 
He at once joined his mother at Newton. He was 
now thirty years old, unknown to any but local 
fame, and the world was before him to conquer. 
Although he had definitely given up the ministry 
in the formal sense, he was still willing to preach 
whenever he was wanted; and continued to accept 
pulpit invitations for the next fifteen years. To 
preach under these conditions meant simply to 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 177 

deliver an ethical discourse in a church, accepting 
no responsibility for the observances that went with 
the sermon, or for the doctrines professed by the 
congregation. For several years after his return, 
in fact, he preached somewhere nearly every Sunday, 
beginning with his own Second Church in Boston. 
He considered himself a layman, but with a sort of 
roving commission to whatever churches might care 
to hear his message. His doctrinal position at this 
time may be illustrated by a few sentences from the 
sermon prepared for his former congregation. "The 
perspective of time, as it sets everything in the right 
view, does the same by Christianity. We learn to 
look at it now as a part of the history of the world; 
to see how it rests on the broad basis of man's moral 
nature, but is not itself that basis. I cannot but 
think that Jesus Christ will be better loved by not 
being adored. . . . Man begins to hear a voice that 
fills the heavens and the earth, saying that God is 
within him; that there is the celestial host. I find 
this amazing revelation of my immediate relation 
to God a solution to all the doubts that oppressed 
me. ... It is the perception of this depth in human 
nature, this infinitude belonging to every man that 
has been born, which has given new value to the 
habits of reflection and solitude. 

Besides lecturing in the pulpit, Emerson began, 
at once after his return, to lecture under secular 



178 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

auspices, and these early courses given by him in 
Boston and elsewhere constitute an important fac- 
tor in the early history of that Lyceum system which 
continued to be for more than half a century one of 
the most vitalizing influences in New England edu- 
cation. His first lectures, before various Boston 
societies, were upon scientific subjects. "The Uses 
of Natural History," " Water," and "The Relations 
of Man to the Globe" were their subjects. He 
also gave two lectures upon "Italy" during this 
first year of his return. Of course these scientific 
lectures were of a popular character, for Emerson, 
although he respected science, was not a specialist. 
But he had the poet's gift of insight, which is rarer 
and more precious than the specialist's knowledge, 
and he foresaw, as other poets of his time were fore- 
seeing, the coming developments of scientific knowl- 
edge. Thus, a quarter-century before "The Origin 
of Species," he was ready with such an anticipation 
of the evolutionary doctrine as this: "Man is no 
upstart in the creation, but has been prophesied in 
nature for a thousand thousand ages before he ap- 
peared; from times incalculably remote, there has 
been a progressive preparation for him, an effort to 
produce him; the meaner creatures containing the 
elements of his structure and pointing at it from 
every side. . . . His limbs are only a more exqui- 
site organization — say rather the finish — of the 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 179 

rudimental forms that have been already sweeping 
the sea and creeping in the mud; the brother of his 
hand is even now cleaving the Arctic Sea in the fin 
of the whale, and innumerable ages since was paw- 
ing the marsh in the flipper of the saurian." This 
must have sounded like wild speculation in 1833, to 
the ears of a Boston audience. 

His wife's family had been possessed of some 
means, and Emerson's share, after the settlement of 
the estate, proved to be sufficient to provide an 
assured income of about twelve hundred dollars. 
This made a home again possible, and he deter- 
mined to find it in Concord. He went there in 
October, 1834, with his mother, and, at Dr. Ripley's 
invitation, they took up their residence in the Old 
Manse — the house which had been built for Emer- 
son's grandfather, in which Emerson had lived as 
a boy, and which was afterwards to acquire still 
further fame as the home of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
Charles Emerson, who was expecting to marry a 
Concord lady, had decided to live in that town, and 
there begin the practice of law. It was one of the 
fondest hopes of the family that the circle might be 
completed by Edward's return from Porto Rico. 
But the very month of the family removal to Con- 
cord was the month of his death in the West Indies. 
"So falls one pile more of hope for this life," wrote 
Emerson when he received the news, and to the 



180 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

memory of the lost brother he afterwards inscribed 
these lines: 

" There is no record left on earth, 
Save on tablets of the heart, 
Of the rich, inherent worth, 
Of the grace that on him shone, 
Of eloquent lips, of joyful wit; 
He could not frame a word unfit, 
An act unworthy to be done." 

It was a few months earlier in 1834 that Emerson 
wrote his first letter to Carry le, thus beginning that 
correspondence of nearly forty years which has 
added so much to our knowledge of both men. This 
first letter gives us an interesting glimpse of the 
writer's ideas concerning current politics. "In 
the last six years government in the United States 
has been fast becoming a job, like great charities. 
A most unfit person in the Presidency has been 
doing the worst things; and the worse he grew, the 
more popular. Now things seem to mend. Webster, 
a good man and as strong as if he were a sinner, 
begins to find himself the centre of a great and 
enlarging party and his eloquence incarnated and 
enacted by them; yet men dare not hope that the 
majority shall be suddenly unseated." It is instruc- 
tive to compare this opinion of Andrew Jackson with 
Irving's, uttered at about the same time. As for Web- 
ster, Emerson's admiration was again expressed in 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 181 

the lines which he wrote as Phi Beta Kappa poet 
at Harvard that summer: 

"There, while hot heads perplexed with fears the state, 
Calm as the morn the manly patriot sate; 
Seemed, when at last his clarion accents broke, 
As if the conscience of the country spoke. 
Not on its base Monadnoc surer stood, 
Than he to common sense and common good." 

The town in which Emerson now elected to make 
his abode was one with which he had both personal 
and traditional associations. The leader in the 
settlement of Concord was his ancestor, Peter 
Bulkeley, of whom Cotton Mather wrote in the 
"Magnalia Christi Americana": "To New Eng- 
land he therefore came, in the Year 1635; and there 
having been for a while, at Cambridge, he carried 
a good Number of Planters with him, up further 
into the Woods, where they gathered the Twelfth 
Church, then formed in the Colony, and calPd the 
Town by the Name of Concord." Emerson's grand- 
father William had been minister of Concord, and 
his widow had married Ezra Ripley, his successor. 
It now remained for the descendant of this stock 
to make the town, by taking up his permanent resi- 
dence there, "the Delphi of New England." It 
was, then, as no stranger that the Concord towns- 
men welcomed the new-comer, conferred upon him 
the dignity of hog-reeve, and invited him to make 



i8 2 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the address upon the occasion of their second cen- 
tennial celebration. This was September 12, 1835, 
and beside him on the platform sat some of the 
veterans who had been minute-men sixty years 
earlier. The address was a sober and matter-of- 
fact sketch of the town's history, with occasional 
touches of the picturesque. He said of the founders: 
"Many were their wants, but more their privileges. 
The light struggled in through windows of oiled 
paper, but they read the Word of God by it." And 
of the old town clerks: " They did not spell very 
correctly, but they contrive to make intelligible the 
will of a free and just community." It was in the 
April next following that Concord dedicated its 
monument to the heroes of the Revolution, and that 
Emerson wrote his " Concord Hymn," with its 
famous lines: 

"Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 

In March, 1835, writing to Carlyle, Emerson 
said: "In a few months, please God, at most, I shall 
have wife, house, and home wherewith and wherein 
to return your former hospitality." The prediction 
was soon fulfilled as to "wife, house, and home," 
but the opportunity to return Carlyle's hospitality 
never came. That summer he bought the house in 
which he lived for the rest of his life, and that fall 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 183 

he married Lydia (which his whim changed to 
Lidian) Jackson of Plymouth. He called the house 
"a mean place,' ' which it hardly was, since it had 
cost its original owner nearly eight thousand dollars; 
what he meant was that it needed trees and flowers 
and furnishings and friends to make it truly a home. 
His second wife was a sister of C. T. Jackson, the 
physician to whom the world owes an immense 
debt of gratitude for his share in the discovery of the 
anaesthetic uses of ether. The wedding took place at 
Plymouth, September 14, and the pair at once took 
possession of the new house, where they were joined 
by Charles and the mother. 

Meanwhile, Emerson had been giving more lec- 
tures in Boston. In the early part of the year he 
gave a course of six, their subjects being Michel- 
angelo, Luther, Milton, George Fox, and Burke. 
In August, he opened the meeting of the American 
Institute of Instruction with an address on "The 
best mode of inspiring a correct taste in English 
literature." It was an address of excellent counsel, 
quite as much needed in our own time as it was then. 
These passages are taken from Mr. Cabot's sum- 
mary: "The first step towards a revolution in our 
state of society would be to impress men's minds 
with the fact that the purest pleasures of life are at 
hand, unknown to them; that whilst all manner of 
miserable books swarm like flies, the fathers of 



184 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

counsel and of heroism, Shakspere, Bacon, Milton, 
and Taylor, lie neglected. . . . Accustom the pupil 
to a solitude, not of place, but of thought. Wean 
him from the traditionary judgments; save him 
wholly from that barren season of discipline which 
young men spend with the Aikins and Ketts and 
Drakes and Blairs; acquiring the false doctrine that 
there is something arbitrary or conventional in 
letters, something else in style than the transparent 
medium through which we should see new and good 
thoughts." The following winter, the subject of 
English literature was again taken up in a course of 
ten lectures which were warmly welcomed by their 
Boston audience. 

In May, 1836, Emerson lost his brother Charles, 
"a soul so costly and so rare that few persons were 
capable of knowing its price, 5 ' "a man of a beauti- 
ful genius, born to speak well, and whose conversa- 
tion for these last years has treated every grave 
question of humanity, and has been my daily bread." 
He was to have been married in September, and to 
have become a member of the Concord household. 
But in the early spring of that year there were symp- 
toms of pulmonary trouble, and it was decided that 
he should seek a milder climate. Waldo went with 
him as far as New York, and left him with his 
brother William, and their mother, then making a 
visit in New York. Returning to Salem, where he 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 185 

was then lecturing, he was hurriedly summoned to 
New York again, but arrived too late to find his 
brother alive. The many beautiful passages con- 
secrated to Charles in Waldo's letters and journals 
give evidence of a grief almost too sacred for discus- 
sion. Charles had been the closest to him of all the 
brothers, and no one ever quite took his place. 

VI 

For another reason, the year 1836 is epochal in 
Emerson's life, since it witnessed the publication of 
his first book. It was a small book, in blue covers, 
published anonymously, containing less than a hun- 
dred pages, and it was called " Nature. " It had 
been in preparation for a long time, and a consider- 
able part of it seems to have been written as early 
as 1833. It had for its motto this passage from 
Plotinus: " Nature is but an image or imitation of 
wisdom, the last thing of the soul; Nature being a 
thing which doth only do, but not know." Small 
as the book was, and devoid of any essential origi- 
nality of thought, it nevertheless brought to a focus 
the ideas that had long been active in the author's 
mind, and in it may be found the germs of all that 
he afterwards wrote. The substance of its philoso- 
phy is that the soul has in itself the possibility of all 
knowledge, that Nature is God's agency for appealing 



186 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

to the soul through the medium of the senses, but 
that God also comes into direct relations with the 
soul. "Of that ineffable essence which we call 
Spirit, he that thinks most will say least. We can 
foresee God in the coarse, as it were, distant phe- 
nomena of matter; but when we try to define and 
describe Himself, both language and thought desert 
us, and we are as helpless as fools and savages. That 
essence refuses to be recorded in propositions, but 
when man has worshipped them intellectually, the 
noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the appari- 
tion of God. It is the organ through which the 
universal spirit speaks to the individual, and strives 
to lead back the individual to it." This is the 
philosophy of Herbert's poem, which the author 
quotes by way of illustration: 

"Man is one world and hath 
Another to attend him." 

The little book did not have a large sale, but there 
were a few acute minds, in both the liberal and the 
orthodox camps, who recognized its significance, 
and took courage or alarm from it according to their 
respective religious affiliations. 

The leading thought of "Nature," apart from its 
trappings of poetry and eloquence, has a readily 
traceable lineage. The philosophy of Hobbes and 
Locke had declared the senses to provide the entire 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 187 

content of the intellect. Leibniz had suggested that 
this did not account for the recipient intellect itself. 
Berkeley had made his bold pronouncement that 
the world of seeming reality exists only in and for 
the subject which creates it; and upon these founda- 
tions Kant had reared the solid structure of his 
critical philosophy, with its distinction between 
" reason " and " understanding, " between phenom- 
enon and noumenon, between things in themselves 
and things as they appear in a universe upon which 
the mind has imposed its fundamental modes of 
thought. The Kantian philosophy, having for its 
kernel this doctrine of transcendental aesthetics, had 
been elaborated in the consciousness of Schelling 
and Fichte, and had received a rich romantic col- 
oring. Coleridge had viewed it through his pris- 
matic imagination, and had familiarized it in this 
refracted form to English readers. When it ap- 
peared in New England, in the writings of Emerson 
and his associates, it was promptly dubbed tran- 
scendentalism, although now far enough removed 
from what Kant had meant by that term. Anything 
more than this historical explanation of New Eng- 
land transcendentalism would be futile. The sub- 
ject eludes definition and defies analysis. It was a 
temper rather than a theory, an aspiration rather 
than a philosophy. "What a benefit," said Emerson, 
"if a rule could be given whereby the mind, dreaming 



188 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

amidst the gross fogs of matter, could at any mo- 
ment east itself and find the sun!" 

The first organization (if so pretentious a word 
may be permitted) of transcendentalism was found 
in a little gathering of earnest souls who met in 
Boston and the neighboring towns, and who con- 
tinued thus to meet, at irregular intervals and with 
shifting membership, for several years. The first 
meeting of this informal club took place in Septem- 
ber, 1836, and was attended by six persons, George 
Ripley, F. H. Hedge, J. F. Clarke, Convers Fran- 
cis, Bronson Alcott, and Emerson. Other members 
were soon added, including W. H. Channing, C. A. 
Bartol, O. A. Brownson, Theodore Parker, Jones 
Very, Henry Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Eliza- 
beth Peabody. They called themselves "the club 
of the like-minded/' seemingly because, although 
no two of them thought alike, "they were united by 
a common impatience of routine thinking." At 
their meetings there was much philosophizing, 
which was doubtless profitable to all concerned, 
although probably not one of their number could 
be called a vigorous thinker along philosophical 
lines, and most of them knew only at second-hand 
the Germans with whose names they made so free. 

It will be noticed that the above list of names 
includes those of Alcott, Thoreau, and Margaret 
Fuller — the three persons with whom Emerson is 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 189 

chiefly associated in our minds, the minor prophets 
of the Concord dispensation. He had met Margaret 
Fuller in 1835, and the next year she made the first 
of her frequently repeated visits to the Emerson 
household. Alcott he had also met at about the 
same time, although he did not have him for a neigh- 
bor at Concord until 1840. Thoreau was born in 
Concord, was graduated from Harvard in 1837, and 
became Emerson's intimate from that time on. His 
attraction for Emerson seems to have followed from 
his possession of an individuality as pronounced as 
Emerson's own, rather than from a common basis 
of ideas and interests. In Emerson's relations with 
Margaret Fuller there was always a suggestion of 
reserve; he seems to have had a notion that she was 
trying to force the citadel of his personality, and he 
constructed intangible outworks for its defence. Of 
Alcott he had a very exalted opinion indeed, call- 
ing him " the highest genius of his time," an estimate 
which the world has been very far from accepting. 

During the year 1836 Emerson was bestirring 
himself to make Carlyle known to the American 
public; as the result of his friendly efforts, " Sartor 
Resartus" was printed in Boston, and a consider- 
able edition disposed of, some time before any Eng- 
lish publisher was venturesome enough to make 
it into a book. Carlyle was urgently invited to 
make a lecture-visit to the United States, and for 



190 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

a time thought seriously of doing so. This year 
also gave birth to Emerson's first child, whom he 
called Waldo, "a lovely wonder that made the 
Universe look friendlier to me." Toward the close 
of the year, Emerson began in Boston a course of 
twelve lectures on "The Philosophy of Modern 
History." He discoursed de omnibus rebus et qui- 
busdam aliis, and whimsically wrote in his journal 
"I mean to insist that whatsoever elements of hu- 
manity have been the subjects of my studies con- 
stitute the indisputable core of Modern History." 
Of his daily routine at this time and for long after- 
wards, Mr. Cabot gives the following account: 
"The morning was his time of work, and he took 
care to guard it from all disturbance. He rose early 
and went to his study, where he remained until 
dinner-time, one o'clock, and in the afternoon went 
to walk. In the evening he was with his family, 
sometimes reading aloud, or went to his study again, 
but never worked late, thinking sleep to be a prime 
necessity for health of body and of mind. He was 
a sound sleeper, and never got up at night, as some 
one has fancied, to jot down thoughts which then 
occurred to him." 

Emerson's first public address which was some- 
thing more than a sermon or a lecture was the fa- 
mous oration on "The American Scholar," given 
before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 191 

College, August 31, 1837. It was a ringing appeal 
to the youthful American mind to cast off the shack- 
les of tradition, to think for itself, and thereby to 
create a new nation of men "inspired by the Divine 
Soul which also inspires all men." It asserted the 
obligation of individualism in the most impressive 
terms. "If the single man plant himself indomit- 
ably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge 
world will come round to him." Let not the scholar 
"quit his belief that a pop-gun is a pop-gun, though 
the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be 
the crack of doom." The conclusion of this oration 
was marked by these ringing periods: "We have 
listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. 
The spirit of the American freeman is already sus- 
pected to be timid, imitative, tame. Politics and 
private avarice make the air we breathe thick and 
fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. 
See already the tragic consequence. The mind of 
this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon 
itself. There is no work for any but the decorous 
and the complaisant. ... Is it not the chief dis- 
grace in the world, not to be an unit; not to be 
reckoned one character; not to yield that peculiar 
fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be 
reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thou- 
sand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; 
and our opinion predicted geographically, as the 



192 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

north, or the south? Not so, brother and friends, 
please God, ours shall not be so. We will walk on 
our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we 
will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall 
be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for 
sensual indulgence. The dread of man and the love 
of man shall be a wall of defence and a wreath of joy 
around all. A nation of men will for the first time 
exist, because each believes himself inspired by the 
Divine Soul which also inspires all men." Dr. Holmes 
called this address our intellectual Declaration of In- 
dependence, and its inspiring quality was such that it 
deserved the title. "We were still socially and intel- 
lectually moored to English thought," says Lowell, 
"■till Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at 
the dangers and the glories of blue water." And 
Lowell's frequently-quoted words are those which 
best enable us to understand the impression which the 
address made. It "was an event without any former 
parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be always 
treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and 
its inspiration. What crowded and breathless aisles, 
what windows clustering with eager heads, what en- 
thusiasm of approval, what grim silence of foregone 
dissent! It was our Yankee version of a lecture 
by Abelard, our Harvard parallel to the last public 
appearances of Schelling." How the oration im- 
pressed Carlyle may be seen in a few words from 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 193 

the letter in which he acknowledged its receipt. 
"Lo, out of the West comes a clear utterance, clearly 
recognizable as a man's voice, and I have a kinsman 
and brother: God be thanked for it! I could have 
wept to read that speech; the clear high melody of 
it went tingling through my heart. My brave Emer- 
son! And all this has been lying silent, quite tran- 
quil in him, these seven years, and the ' vociferous 
platitude' dinning his ears on all sides, and he quietly 
answering no word; and a whole world of Thought 
has silently built itself in these calm depths, and, 
the day being come, says quite softly, as if it were a 
common thing, 'Yes, I am here too.' " 

A year later, Emerson made another public ap- 
pearance of equal, if not greater significance. The 
graduating class of the Divinity School at Cambridge 
called upon him for an address, which he prepared, 
and delivered Sunday evening, July 15, 1838. It be- 
gan with the passage which is one of Emerson's pur- 
ple patches, and which set the pitch for the discourse 
that followed: "In this refulgent Summer, it has 
been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass 
grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with 
fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full 
of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the 
balm of Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no 
gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through 
the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost 



194- LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, 
and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the 
world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again 
for the crimson dawn." Thus persuasively opened 
the address which fluttered the dove-cotes of New 
England orthodoxy as they had never been fluttered 
before, which proved even too heretical for the 
acceptance of the speaker's former Unitarian associ- 
ates, and which so stirred up the waters of contro- 
versy that they remained troubled for long years 
afterwards. Emerson's fundamental ideas about 
religion had been slowly elaborated, but they were 
at last ripe for expression, and in this address they 
were set forth in the terms to which he essentially 
adhered for the rest of his life. His own deprecation 
of consistency as the hobgoblin of little minds must 
be taken with considerable allowance ; few men have 
held so consistently as he to the broad underlying 
principles of their philosophy. 

The eloquent preamble in praise of the beauty of 
nature soon gives place to a deeper vein of thought. 
"When the mind opens, and reveals the laws which 
traverse the universe, and make things what they 
are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere 
illustration and fable of the mind." Then intrudes 
upon it the "sentiment of virtue," the intuition of 
the moral nature, the overwhelming sense of God as 
no external power but an immanent presence in the 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 195 

universe and in ourselves. This thought is no prod- 
uct of the mere understanding, it is the gift of the 
transcendental reason. Religions are created at the 
hest of the reason, and are clothed by it with sym- 
bols to make them accessible to the understand- 
ing. Then tradition gathers about the symbols, 
and invests them with sanctity; authority usurps 
the place of intuition; churches and creeds become 
established; "the doctrine of inspiration is lost; the 
base doctrine of the majority of voices usurps the 
place of the doctrine of the soul." This has been the 
history of all religions, of the religion of Christ no 
less than the others. "The idioms of his language 
and the figures of his rhetoric have usurped the 
place of his truth, and churches are not built on his 
principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became 
a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and 
Egypt, before. He spoke of Miracles, for he felt 
that man's life was a miracle, and he knew that this 
miracle shines as the character ascends. But the 
word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, 
gives a false impression ; it is Monster. It is not one 
with the blowing clover and the falling rain." Then 
followed a survey of historical Christianity, boldly 
pointing out its defects, but warmly praising two of 
its institutions, — the Sabbath and the pulpit. But 
the pulpit, Emerson complained, had fallen into 
formalism, and no longer discharged its higher 



196 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

functions. Then came a direct appeal to his audi- 
tors, young men who were soon to fill pulpits, that 
they should preach the spirit and not the letter, 
"and acquaint men at first hand with Deity." And 
the peroration of the address vied in eloquence 
with the preamble. " I look for the hour when that 
supreme Beauty, which ravished the souls of those 
Eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and 
through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall 
speak in the West also. The Hebrew and Greek 
Scriptures contain immortal sentences, that have been 
bread of life to millions. But they have no epical 
integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in their 
order to the intellect. I look for the new Teacher, 
that shall follow so far those shining laws, that he 
shall see them come full circle; shall see their round- 
ing complete grace; shall see the world to be the 
mirror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law 
of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show 
that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, 
with Beauty, and with Joy." 

The "tempest in a wash-bowl" stirred up by this 
address was surprising to Emerson, and far from 
agreeable, because it seemed to make him a much 
more conspicuous public figure than he wished to 
be. The winds of orthodox doctrine blew great 
guns for a time, and then subsided into angry mut- 
terings. The chief gunner who directed the storm 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 197 

(if the familiar nautical phrase may justify this 
mixture of metaphor) was the theologian Andrews 
Norton, who, after pronouncing anathema upon 
the whole crew of transcendentalists and their " ill- 
understood notions, obtained by blundering, at 
second-hand, through the crabbed and disgusting 
obscurity of the worst German speculatists," went 
on to say: "The state of things described might 
seem a mere insurrection of folly, a sort of Jack 
Cade rebellion, which must soon be put down, if 
those engaged in it were not gathering confidence 
from neglect, and had not proceeded to attack prin- 
ciples which are the foundation of human society 
and human happiness. Silly women and silly 
young men, it is to be feared, have been drawn 
away from their Christian faith, if not divorced from 
all that can properly be called religion.' ' Emerson 
was then specifically assailed, and it was explained 
that responsibility for his "insult to religion " was 
to be placed, not upon the authorities of the Divinity 
School, but upon the young students who had been 
reckless enough to invite him to address them. 
There were many other attacks, but whatever their 
lack of urbanity, they left Emerson's serenity unruf- 
fled. He wrote to his brother that "the Cambridge 
address has given plentiful offence, and will, until 
nine days are out." And in his journal he said: 
"Analyze the chiding opposition, and it is made up 



198 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

of such timidities, uncertainties and no-opinions 
that it is not worth dispersing." "I can very well 
afford to be accounted bad or foolish by a few dozen 
or a few hundred persons, — I who see myself greeted 
by the good expectation of so many friends, far 
beyond any power of thought or communication of 
thought residing in me." 

It would not be particularly profitable, at this 
late day, to discuss in further detail the controversy 
occasioned by the Divinity School address. It 
lasted for years, and occasioned a polemic torrent 
from the pulpit and periodical press, in pamphlets 
and books. It alienated from Emerson the Harvard 
influence for a whole generation, and deprived him 
of further honors from his alma mater until after 
the Civil War. Mr. F. B. Sanborn says: "When 
I entered Harvard College in 1852, just midway of 
this thirty years' war against the heretics and re- 
formers, the readers of Emerson were but a feeble 
minority in the four hundred students who then 
gathered there, and the faculty of some thirty mem- 
bers had but half-a-dozen of the Emersonian school 
among them." The antagonism to Emerson repre- 
sents what is now so evidently an uberwundener 
Standpunkt that it is difficult for us to realize how 
bitter it was three-quarters of a century ago. But 
while listening to the echoes from that distant past, 
a word should be said about Emerson's correspon- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 199 

dence with Henry Ware, who had been his colleague 
in the Second Church. Ware felt it his duty to make 
a public reply to Emerson, but was at the same 
time unhappy at finding himself opposed to one 
whom he both esteemed and loved. The letters 
exchanged by the two men at this time are couched 
in terms of the utmost friendliness, and the follow- 
ing quotation from Emerson's reply to Ware is 
most instructive: "I well know there is no scholar 
less willing or less able than myself to be a polemic. 
I could not give an account of myself, if challenged. 
I could not possibly give you one of the ' arguments' 
you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine 
stands; for I do not know what arguments are in 
reference to any expression of a thought. I delight 
in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare 
say so, I am the most helpless of mortal men." With 
this letter Emerson practically disappeared from 
any personal connection with the controversy. The 
I polemic" that he could not constrain himself to be 
soon arose in the person of a younger man, Theodore 
Parker, "the right arm in the conflict," as Dr. 
Holmes calls him. 

In November of the year preceding, Emerson had 
made, in Concord, his first public address on the sub- 
ject of " Slavery," and in December had begun his 
Boston course of ten lectures on "Human Culture." 
In March, 1838, he had lectured on "War" before 



2 oo LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the American Peace Society. Then followed the 
Divinity School address in July, and a few days 
later in the same month, an oration on "Literary 
Ethics," given before the literary societies of Dart- 
mouth College. The College was a conservative 
stronghold uninfected by liberalism, but it did not 
seem to discover the cloven hoof of its guest, for 
the Cambridge excitement of the week before had 
not yet spread to New Hampshire. Dr. Holmes 
makes this amusing comment on the situation: "If 
there were any drops of false or questionable doc- 
trine in the silver shower of eloquence under which 
they had been sitting, the plumage of orthodoxy 
glistened with unctuous repellents, and a shake or 
two in coming out of church left the sturdy old 
dogmatists as dry as ever." The matter of this ora- 
tion was not especially perilous, and its counsel 
was of the noblest. To the youth who says, "I 
must eat the good of the land, and let learning and 
romantic expectations go, until a more convenient 
season," there were given these solemn words of 
warning: "Then dies the man in you; then once 
more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, 
as they have died already in a thousand thousand 
men. . . . Why should you renounce your right to 
traverse the starlit deserts of truth, for the premature 
comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also 
has its roof and house and board. Make yourself 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 201 

necessary to the world, and mankind will give you 
bread; and if not store of it, yet such as shall not 
take away your property in all men's possessions, in 
all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope." 

How well Emerson's practice squared with his 
precept may be shown from a letter written to Car- 
lyle in this same year. "I occupy, or improve , as 
we Yankees say, two acres only of God's earth; on 
which is my house, my kitchen-garden, my orchard 
of thirty young trees, my empty barn. My house 
is now a very good one for comfort, and abounding 
in room. Besides my house, I have, I believe, 
$22,000, whose income in ordinary years is six per 
cent. I have no other tithe or glebe except the in- 
come of my winter lectures, which was last winter 
$800. Well, with this income, here at home, I am a 
rich man. I stay at home and go abroad at my own 
instance. I have food, warmth, leisure, books, 
friends." The ideal of " plain living and high think- 
ing" thus pictured is what long kept New England 
in the spiritual forefront of our national life ; it is an 
ideal that has almost wholly vanished from our 
civilization, and no thinking person can fail to be 
filled with a sense of wistful regret at thought of 
what has been lost. 

Upon the " friends," in particular, last named in 
the enumeration of his goods, Emerson put much 
stress. Some of them have already been named; 



202 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

others, such as Jones Very, Ellery Charming, and 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, will occur to most readers. 
Channing, who married Margaret Fuller's younger 
sister, wrote to Emerson, explaining his choice of 
Concord for a home, in these terms: "I have but 
one reason for settling in one place in America; it is 
because you are there. I not only have no preference 
for any place, but I do not know that I should ever 
be able to settle upon any place, if you were not 
living. I came to Concord attracted by you ; because 
your mind, your talents, your cultivation, are super- 
ior to those of any man I know, living or dead." 
Many others, less known to fame, found Emerson 
a lodes tone to draw them to the place where he lived. 
Hawthorne has described these moths fluttering 
about the candle in a striking passage. "Young 
visionaries to whom just so much of insight had been 
imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them, 
came to seek the clue that should lead them out of 
their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theo- 
rists — whose systems, at first air, had imprisoned 
them in an iron framework — travelled painfully to 
his door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite his 
free spirit into their own thraldom. People that 
had lighted on a new thought, or a thought that 
they fancied new, came to Emerson, as the finder 
of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain 
its value." Many of these visitors went away dis- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 203 

appointed, for they could not "draw out" their 
host, or involve him in argument about subjects 
that did not interest him. He listened to them courte- 
ously, but with imperturbable serenity, and they 
departed with a sense of being baffled. Even Mar- 
garet Fuller and Alcott complained of his aloofness, 
and he himself said that there were "fences" between 
him and some of his dearest friends. 

In the case of Hawthorne, who in 1842 took up 
his residence in the Old Manse, there seems to have 
been a much higher "fence" than was to be ex- 
pected. Here were two men — perhaps the two 
greatest writers that America has produced — living 
for many years as fellow-townsmen, and never com- 
ing into anything like intimacy. It was a case of 
mutually defective sympathy, accentuated by Haw- 
thorne's shyness and Emerson's indifference to 
matters that he found uninteresting. The record 
shows numerous casual meetings, and one long 
walk together. Each respected the other, but at a 
distance. Hawthorne wrote that "it was good to 
meet him in the wood paths or sometimes in our 
avenue with that pure intellectual gleam diffusing 
about his presence like the garment of a shining 
one." And Emerson wrote after Hawthorne's 
death: "I thought him a greater man than any of 
his words betray; there was still a great deal of work 
in him, and he might one day show a purer power. 



204 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Moreover, I have felt sure of him, in his neighbor- 
hood and in his necessities of sympathy and intelli- 
gence, — that I could well wait his time, his unwill- 
ingness and caprice, and might one day conquer a 
friendship. ... I do not think any of his books 
worthy of his genius. I admired the man, who was 
simple, amiable, truth-loving, and frank in conver- 
sation, but I never read his books with pleasure; 
they are too young. " This offers a very curious 
illustration of Emerson's most serious limitation. 
Literature was to him the vehicle of thought and 
spiritual expression; its form meant little to him, 
and of what men know as art he had a very imper- 
fect notion. 

In December, 1838, Emerson began another 
course of lectures in Boston. They were ten in 
number, and "Human Life" was their vague gen- 
eral designation. These lecture-courses had come 
to be a regular feature of the Boston season, and con- 
tinued to be so for many years. The subject of the 
succeeding course (1 839-1 840) was "The Present 
Age," another conveniently vague caption. While 
this course was going on, an address was given at 
East Lexington for the dedication of a new church. 
Ibsen's Brand would have found a kindred soul in 
the Emerson who preached that a "church is not 
builded when the last clapboard is laid, but then first 
when the consciousness of union with the Supreme 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 205 

Soul dawns in the lowly heart of the worshipper.'' 
In August, 1841, an address on "The Method of 
Nature" was given at Waterville College in Maine. 
A few days before, he had written to Carlyle: "As 
usual at this season of the year, I, incorrigible spout- 
ing Yankee, am writing an oration to deliver to the 
boys in one of our little country colleges." The 
purport of this lecture is that nature represents 
tendency rather than finality, that " it does not exist 
to any one, or to any number of particular ends," 
and that it " obeys that redundancy or excess of life 
which in conscious beings we call ecstasy." Thus 
viewed sub specie ceternitatis, nature presents a model 
for human life, and men should take heed lest 
they attach too much importance to the specific aims 
toward which they strive. "I say to you plainly 
there is no end to which your practical faculty can 
aim so sacred or so large, that if pursued for itself, 
will not at last become carrion and an offence to the 
nostril. The imaginative faculty of the soul must 
be fed with objects immense and eternal." Probably 
the college boys did not make much out of this, but 
it is highly significant in the light of his teaching in 
general, and particularly in view of what often 
seemed his indifference to the burning questions of 
the hour. 

He was at times, however, aroused out of this 
indifference by some exigent crisis. In 1838, his 



206 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

indignation flamed out into a letter to President Van 
Buren protesting against the forced removal of the 
Cherokee Indians from Georgia. It is hardly the 
gentle Emerson of the " Essays" who uses such 
language as this: "We only state the fact, that a 
crime is projected that confounds our understand- 
ing by its magnitude, a crime that really deprives 
us, as well as the Cherokees, of a country; for how 
could we call the conspiracy that should crush these 
poor Indians, our government, or the land that was 
cursed by their parting and dying imprecations, 
our country, any more? You, sir, will bring down 
that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if 
your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy; and 
the name of the nation, hitherto the sweet omen of 
religion and liberty, will stink to the world." Writ- 
ing in his journal the next day, he said: " Yesterday 
went the letter to Van Buren — a letter hated of me; 
a deliverance that does not deliver the soul. I write 
my journal, I read my lecture with joy; but this 
stirring in the philanthropic mud gives me no peace." 
We shall see later, as the question of slavery gradu- 
ally came to occupy the foremost place among sub- 
jects of public interest, with what courageous words 
(and even acts) Emerson allied himself with the 
cause of human freedom. 

In the years 1839 and 1841, respectively, two 
more children, both girls, were born to the Emerson 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 207 

household. But early in 1842, a few months after 
the second of these births, the boy Waldo died, 
soon after entering upon his sixth year. "A perfect 
little boy," the father called him in his next letter 
to Carlyle. "You can never sympathize with me; 
you can never know how much of me such a young 
child can take away. A few weeks ago I accounted 
myself a very rich man, and now the poorest of all. 
What would it avail to tell you anecdotes of a sweet 
and wonderful boy, such as we solace and sadden 
ourselves with every morning and evening? From 
a perfect health and as happy a life and as happy 
influences as ever child enjoyed, he was hurried out 
of my arms in three short days by Scarlatina. . . . 
How often I have pleased myself that one day I 
should send to you this Morning Star of mine, and 
stay at home so gladly behind such a representa- 
tive." The touching "Threnody" of the "Poems" 
is the lasting memorial of this bereavement. 

VII 

One of Emerson's first ideas after his formal 
resignation from the ministry had been to start a 
magazine. "Am I not to have a magazine of my 
ownty-donty," he wrote to his brother, "scorning 
co-operation and taking success by storm? The 
vice of these undertakings in general is that they 



208 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

depend on many contributors, who all speak an 
average sense, and no one of them utters his own 
individuality. Yet that the soul of a man should 
speak out, and not the soul general of the town 
or town-pump, is essential to all eloquence. . . . 
Wait and see what a few months shall do to hatch 
this fine egg." The months passed, and the years, 
but no magazine was born. The idea, however, was 
persistent, and from time to time we get glimpses of 
it in the letters and journals. "We aspire to have a 
work on the First Philosophy in Boston," he wrote 
to Carlyle in 1835. The subject was a good deal 
discussed during the following years in the "trans- 
cendentalist " symposia. It was even suggested that 
Carlyle might be persuaded to come to America 
and become the editor of such a periodical. "A 
concert of singing mice with a savage and hungry 
old grimalkin as leader of the orchestra!" is the way 
in which Dr. Holmes comments upon this suggestion. 
At last, the energy of Margaret Fuller supplied the 
necessary impetus, and "The Dial" was born in 
July, 1840. It was described as a quarterly maga- 
zine for literature, philosophy, and religion. Miss 
Fuller assumed the editorship and George Ripley 
undertook the business management. So far from 
conforming with Emerson's earlier notion of an 
organ for the expression of his own individuality, 
"The Dial," as actually projected, was thought of 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 209 

by Emerson chiefly as a means of persuading the 
public to appreciate the hitherto unrecognized merits 
of his friends, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, 
Henry Thoreau, and a few others. 

The prospectus of "The Dial" described it as "a 
medium for the freest expression of thought on the 
questions which interest earnest minds in every 
community." The "discussion of principles" rather 
than the "promotion of measures" was to be its 
aim, and its contributors were to " possess little in 
common but the love of intellectual freedom and the 
hope of social progress." It was to resemble the 
instrument from which its name was taken in "meas- 
uring no hours but those of sunshine," and was to 
speak with a "cheerful rational voice amidst the 
din of mourners and polemics." The impression it 
made upon Carlyle was of a creature "all spirit- 
like, aeriform, aurora-borealis-like," and he asked: 
"Will no Angel body himself out of that; no stal- 
wart Yankee man, with color in the cheeks of him, 
and a coat on his back!" Emerson's program of 
untrammeled freedom on the part of contributors 
worked out to bewildering effect, as far as the public 
was concerned, while as to himself, his biographer 
tells us that "he winced at the violations of literary 
form, and confessed, in strict confidence, that he 
found some of the numbers unreadable." "The 
Dial" was published quarterly, and lasted for four 



210 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

years. The price of subscription was three dollars, 
and there was no thought of paying for contributions 
or editorial services. But even under these conditions 
it ran steadily into debt, and when it expired, after 
changing its publishers several times, it left Emerson 
several hundred dollars out of pocket. The respon- 
sibility of editorial management also rested upon his 
shoulders after the first two years, when Miss Fuller's 
health failed, and the combined burdens became 
too great for him to bear. "Poor 'Dial' — it has 
not pleased any mortal," he wrote dejectedly when 
the end was near, "and yet, though it contains a 
deal of matter I would gladly spare, I yet value it as 
a portfolio which preserves and conveys to distant 
persons precisely what I should borrow and tran- 
scribe to send them if I could." 

Dr. Garnett reminds us that among the last 
utterances of "The Dial" was the precept to "ener- 
gise about the Hecatic sphere," and suggests that 
its contributors were of the type of the apocryphal 
lady who once put the question to Alcott: "Does 
omnipotence abnegate attribute?" A great deal of 
this sort of fun was poked at the periodical in its 
own days, and it still tempts to similar jesting. 
Nevertheless, "The Dial" has a very important 
place in the history of American literature. Besides 
much that is merely Orphic or long-winded, its pages 
reveal to us many an essay or poem that now ranks 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 211 

as a sort of classic. It exhibited Emerson himself 
for the first time as a poet, and it first published 
some of his best-known essays. It gave Thoreau 
his opportunity, and first introduced him to the 
public. It contained some of the best writings of 
Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, and the younger 
Channings. It published important pieces of trans- 
lation, and helped not a little to direct the stream of 
New England culture into cosmopolitan channels. 
It exerted a stimulating influence upon the whole 
group of New England writers, and we can now see 
it to have been a very genuine if incalculable force 
for intellectual and moral good. 

The ferment which led to the establishment of 
"The Dial" found another mode of expression in 
the community experiment of Brook Farm, which 
took shape in 1841 and was carried on until its 
"Phalanstery" was destroyed by fire in 1846. Emer- 
son had written to Carlyle in 1840 to the following 
effect: "We are all a little wild here with numberless 
projects of social reform. Not a reading man but 
has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat 
pocket. I am gently mad myself, and am resolved 
to live cleanly." But although Brook Farm aroused 
Emerson's respectful interest, his ingrained individu- 
alism made it impossible for him to take part in the 
experiment, and his relations with it were only 
"tangential." He loved the men and women who 



212 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

joined to form the community, but he had a clear 
sense of the defects and even absurdities inherent 
in any such plan ; when he summed it up long after- 
wards, he admitted that Brook Farm must have 
been an agreeable place to live in, and that it had an 
educative and refining influence upon the associated 
"farmers." But he adds, in good-natured dis- 
paragement, that "it was a perpetual picnic, a 
French Revolution in small, an Age of Reason in a 
patty-pan." 

It was during the "Dial" years that Emerson 
collected and published the two series of "Essays," 
the volumes appearing in 1841 and 1844, respec- 
tively. "My little raft," he calls the first collec- 
tion, "no shipbuilding, no clipper, smack, nor skiff 
even, only boards and logs tied together." It is a 
modest description, but a fairly accurate one, not 
only of this first volume, but also of each volume 
that was to follow. And although the raft was a 
fabric of imperfectly related parts — of random 
aphorisms and examples — it bore a freight of rich 
and penetrating thought. Many of the essays had 
already done duty as lectures; others were pieced 
together from the author's note-books; all were 
made remarkable by their diamond-like qualities of 
incisive edge and refractive brilliancy. The two 
volumes comprised about a score of essays, among 
which were numbered such famous papers as "His- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 213 

tory," "Self-Reliance," " Compensation,' ' "Friend- 
ship/' "Heroism," and "The Over-Soul." They 
were the volumes which first made Emerson known 
to the larger public at home, and which first (through 
Carlyle's friendly offices) introduced him to English 
readers. They proved the cause of much bewilder- 
ment to minds of stolid and pragmatic type, but 
speedily won the suffrages of the elect, and estab- 
lished their author's position as a thinker and liter- 
ary artist with whom it was necessary henceforth to 
reckon. 

A passage from the essay on " Self -Reliance " may 
be here reproduced for the double purpose of illus- 
trating the style and the thought of the man who thus 
made his formal entrance into our classical literature. 
"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift 
you can present every moment with the cumulative 
force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted 
talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, 
half possession. That which each can do best, none 
but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows 
what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. 
Where is the master who could have taught Shake- 
speare? Where is the master who could have in- 
structed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or 
Newton? Every great man is an unique. The 
Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could 
not borrow. If anybody will tell me whom the great 



214 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

man imitates in the original crisis when he performs 
a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can 
teach him. Shakespeare will never be made by the 
study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned 
thee, and thou canst not hope too much or dare too 
much. There is at this moment, there is for me an 
utterance bare and grand as that of the colossal chisel 
of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of 
Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not 
possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with 
thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if 
I can hear what these patriarchs say, surely I can 
reply to them in the same pitch of voice: for the ear 
and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Dwell 
up there in the simple and noble regions of thy life, 
and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again." 
Here is the central core of all Emerson's teaching, the 
confession of his steadfast faith in the power of sin- 
cere and conscious individual purpose. 

In 1847, tne " Essays" were followed by the 
" Poems." Emerson had been writing fragmentary 
verse for many years, and some of the pieces had 
circulated widely among his friends. During the 
"Dial" period a number of his poems appeared in 
the pages of that periodical, and thus reached a 
wider, although not too wide, public. As early as 
1839, ne na d sent a copy of the "Rhodora" verses 
to J. F. Clarke, who had asked for them, and with 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 215 

them these reflections: "It is strange, seeing the 
delight we take in verses, that we can so seldom 
write them, and so are not ashamed to lay up old 
ones, say sixteen years, instead of improvising them 
as freely as the wind blows, whenever we and our 
brothers are attuned to music. I have heard of a 
citizen who made an annual joke. I believe I have 
in April or May an annual poetic conatus rather than 
afflatus, experimenting to the length of thirty lines or 
so, if I may judge from the dates of the rhythmical 
scraps I detect among my MSS. I look upon this 
incontinence as merely the redundancy of a suscepti- 
bility to poetry which makes all the bards my daily 
treasures, and I can well run the risk of being ridicu- 
lous once a year for the benefit of happy reading all 
the other days." The poem which accompanied 
this letter is one of the best-known and most 
characteristic of Emerson's shorter pieces. 

"In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 
To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 
The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 
Made the black water with their beauty gay; 
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, 
And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why 
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: 



2 i6 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! 

I never thought to ask, I never knew; 

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 

The self-same Power that brought me there brought you." 

It was not the charge of ridicule so much as that 
of obscurity which the "Poems" had to meet when 
they were finally put into a volume. They proved to 
be more quintessential in their presentation of the 
author's thought than the "Essays" had been, while 
the poetry of his contemporaries was nothing if not 
obvious. The reader of our later days has had 
more training in poetic subtlety, and finds no par- 
ticular difficulty in understanding even so cryptic 
an utterance as the " Brahma" stanzas — that 
stumbling-block of the literal-minded in an earlier 
generation. Emerson's view of the poetic function 
was the highest and most serious possible; his was 

"No jingling serenader's art, 
Nor tinkle of piano-strings," 

and the world has come to value his verses more 
and more with every succeeding year. We now see 
that he had the poetic gift in the truest sense, and 
that his performance, while it does not compare in 
bulk with that of Longfellow, or Whittier, or Lowell, 
is touched, at its best, with the spark of a finer imagi- 
nation than was theirs, and exhibits qualities of 
style that were beyond their reach. He called him- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 217 

self "half a bard," but his half is better than the 
whole of many a poet of wider popularity. 

During these years of the "Dial" and the " Essays" 
and the " Poems," Emerson had steadily pursued 
the task of the lecturer. Hardly a year passed in 
which he did not give a new course, besides occa- 
sional addresses. Many of the courses and single 
lectures were repeated in various cities and towns, 
and the speaker thus became personally known to 
great numbers of his fellow-countrymen. The 
courses of this period included eight on "The Times" 
(1841-1842), five on "New England" (1843), an d 
seven on "Representative Men" (1 845-1 846). Not- 
able single addresses were "The Young American" 
(1844), "Emancipation in the West Indies" (1844), 
"The Scholar" (1845), and "Eloquence" (1847). 
Poets and philosophers must earn their living, like 
other people, and lecturing was Emerson's way of 
earning his. He did not always like to do it, "to go 
peddling with my literary pack of notions," as he 
.put it, and his distaste for the business once drew 
from him the petulant question: "Are not lectures 
a kind of Peter Parley's story of Uncle Plato, and 
a puppet show of the Eleusinian mysteries?" It 
took, moreover, a good deal of lecturing to support 
a family, even in plain Concord, and with no rent 
to pay for the home; the stipend for an evening on 
the platform was frequently not more than ten dol- 



218 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

lars, and rarely exceeded fifty. During these years 
Emerson also made some additions to his modest 
country estate, and his family life was enriched by 
the birth, in 1844, of a son, Edward Waldo, to fill 
the place of the boy who had died two or three 
years before. 

In 1847, a new periodical, "The Massachusetts 
Quarterly Review," was started in Boston as a more 
robust successor to "The Dial." Emerson wrote the 
inaugural address, and his name remained attached 
to the journal for some time as that of an editor, 
although he wrote no more in its pages. The real 
editor was Theodore Parker, who indulged in harder 
theological hitting than a true transcendentalist 
would have thought seemly. This was the year in 
which Emerson, yielding to the blandishments of 
some English friends who were insistent that he 
should come and lecture before English audiences, 
made his second journey abroad, fifteen years after 
the first one. He sailed from Boston on October 
5, and reached Liverpool after a voyage of seventeen 
days. He remained until the following July, spend- 
ing what were probably the busiest eight months of 
his life in a round of social functions and sight-seeing, 
with lectures interspersed. Before taking up his 
duties, he hastened to Chelsea, and renewed the 
acquaintance with Carlyle begun fourteen years 
earlier. His lecture engagements took him to Edin- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 219 

burgh, Liverpool, Manchester, and many provincial 
towns, and finally to London. Here his discourses 
attracted less attention than they had elsewhere, a 
fact due, at least in part, to the Chartist agitation, 
then at its height. Before addressing his London 
audiences, he went to Paris, also seething with revo- 
lutionary excitement, and enjoyed the human specta- 
cle to the full, besides seeing many interesting people. 
Emerson's English experiences upon this visit 
were very different from what they had been before. 
Upon the earlier occasion he had been an obscure 
young man, presenting his own credentials; the 
second visit found him a sort of celebrity, and he was 
showered with attentions. He describes himself as 
" dining out in a great variety of companies, seeing 
shilling shows, attending scientific and other soci- 
eties, seeing picture-galleries, operas, and theatres." 
It was a novel life for a simple citizen of Concord, 
and he took to it with no little zest. He called upon 
Wordsworth, finding him, at seventy-seven, "a fine 
healthy old man, with a weather-beaten face." He 
was a guest at the famous "breakfasts" of Rogers 
and Milnes. He had pleasant meetings with Tenny- 
son, Dickens, Macaulay, Clough, De Quincey, 
Patmore, Hunt, Froude, and a host of lesser men of 
letters, to say nothing of scientists, philosophers, 
and statesmen. One meeting is pleasantly recounted 
by Dr. Garnett. "He made a pilgrimage to Strat- 



220 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

ford-on-Avon with a party from Coventry, among 
them a very plain young woman who told him that 
she liked Rousseau's l Confessions' best of all his 
books. He started; then said, 'so do I;' and the 
plain young woman wrote next day that the Ameri- 
can stranger was the one real man she had seen. He 
had had his first and last meeting with George Eliot." 
How he impressed another English observer of the 
discriminating sort may be read in the diary of the 
veteran Crabb Robinson. "It was with a feeling 
of pre-determined dislike that I had the curiosity to 
look at Emerson at Lord Northampton's a fortnight 
ago; when in an instant all my dislike vanished. He 
has one of the most interesting countenances I ever 
beheld, — a combination of intelligence and sweetness 
that quite disarmed me. ... He conquers minds 
as well as hearts wherever he goes, and without 
convincing anybody's reason of any one thing, 
exalts their reason and makes their minds of more 
worth than they ever were before." What Emerson 
thought of the people among whom he had been 
sojourning is characteristically said in these parting 
words: "I leave England with an increased respect 
for the Englishman. His stuff or substance seems 
to be the best of the world. I forgive him all his 
pride. My respect is the more generous that I have 
no sympathy with him, only an admiration." 
Upon his return from England, Emerson again 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 221 

took up the work of lecturing, and extended the 
field of his engagements until he had a clientele 
stretching all the way from the Atlantic to the Missis- 
sippi, and a Western journey in the winter became 
an almost annual feature of his life for the next 
score of years. His radius reached to St. Louis, 
Galena, and Milwaukee. Traveling in the West 
was no easy matter in the 'fifties, and his letters 
make frequent note of its discomforts and hardships. 
Here is a complaint from Pittsburg: "I arrived here 
last night after a very tedious and disagreeable 
journey from Philadelphia, by railway and canal, 
with little food and less sleep; two nights being spent 
in the rail-cars and the third on the floor of a canal- 
boat, where the cushion allowed me for a bed was 
crossed at the knees by another tier of sleepers as 
long-limbed as I, so that in the air was a wreath of 
legs; and the night, which was bad enough, would 
have been far worse but that we were so thoroughly 
tired we could have slept standing." Even after 
reaching Pittsburg, there was no rest for Emerson, 
who wanted to go straight to bed, but was hustled 
off to the lecture-hall instead, where he delivered 
himself of "poor old c England' once more." Two 
years later, we hear from him at the capital of Illi- 
nois, whence he writes: "It rains and thaws incess- 
antly, and if we step off the short street we go up to 
the shoulders, perhaps, in mud. My chamber is a 



222 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

cabin; my fellow-boarders are legislators; two or 
three governors or ex-governors live in the house.' ' 
And as late as 1867 he tells of crossing the Mississippi 
in a skiff, dodging the ice-floes or pulling the boat 
over them, himself almost congealed to ice before 
the other side was reached. 

During these years of industrious lecturing, Emer- 
son was also adding to the number of his printed 
books. " Nature: Addresses and Lectures" was 
published in 1849, an d " Representative Men" in 
the year following. That was also the year of Mar- 
garet Fuller's tragic death on Fire Island beach, and 
he joined with W. H. Channing and J. F. Clarke 
in writing the memoirs of that gifted woman. In 
1856, the lectures on England, having done duty on 
many a platform, were made into the book called 
" English Traits." The lectures on "The Conduct 
of Life," first given at Pittsburg in 1851, were pub- 
lished as a volume in i860. 

Emerson's mother, as we have seen, died in 1853, 
after he had been blessed by her companionship 
for a full half-century. She died in his house, where 
her home had been since his marriage, and there 
was "one less room to go to for sure society in the 
house." She had "kept her heart and mind clear, 
and her own, until the end." Writing to Carlyle, 
the son says: "It is very necessary that we should 
have mothers — we that read and write — to keep us 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 223 

from becoming paper. I had found that age did 
not make that she should die without causing me 
pain. In my journeying lately, when I think of 
home the heart is taken out." 



VIII 

We must now turn back a little to review Emer- 
son's relation to the one great public cause upon 
which he was outspoken and uncompromising. Dur- 
ing the early 'thirties the abolitionist agitation, under 
the single-hearted leadership of Garrison, became 
a serious factor in our political life, and was des- 
tined from that time on to gain momentum stead- 
ily, until at last it should draw the lines of that 
" irrepressible conflict" which was to rend the nation 
with civil war. At first, Emerson refused to be 
drawn into the struggle, for it appeared to him to 
represent merely one aspect of that passion for 
reforming society which he was temperamentally 
unfitted to share, and which was productive of 
excesses in thought and action that he found highly 
distasteful. He held, as Ibsen at a later day, that 
all external reforms were trumpery, and that a 
regeneration of the human spirit should be the 
aim of the philosopher having the lasting welfare of 
society at heart. This regeneration was his special 
task, and he looked askance at movements that 



224 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

were tarred with the stick of too much practicality. 
Nevertheless, he could not fail to recognize the deep 
devotion of the early abolitionists to their cause, 
nor could he withhold from them a certain measure 
of his sympathy. And as the years went on, his 
sympathy was given in more and more generous 
measure, until at last the time came when there was 
"an infamy in the air," and he spoke his mind, 
declaring himself a fighter in the cause of human 
liberty. 

Emerson's first public words on the subject of 
slavery were spoken in 1837, when he addressed a 
Concord audience. He was chiefly moved to this 
utterance by the spirit of intolerance which at that 
time made it almost impossible for the abolitionists 
to find platforms for their public meetings in New 
England. Churches and public halls were alike 
closed to the agitation, and it was rather as a cham- 
pion of free discussion than of freedom in the ab- 
stract that he was prevailed upon to take up the 
question of slavery at all. "When we have distinctly 
settled for ourselves the right and the wrong of this 
question," he said, "and have covenanted with our- 
selves to keep the channels of opinion open, each 
man for himself, I think we have done all that is in- 
cumbent on most of us to do. Sorely as we may feel 
the wrongs of the poor slave in Carolina or in Cuba, 
we have each of us our hands full of much nearer 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 225 

duties." Three years later, he wrote these words 
in his journal: "Does he not do more to abolish 
slavery who works all day steadily in his own garden 
than he who goes to the abolition-meeting and makes 
a speech? He who does his own work frees a slave. 
He who does not his own work is a slave-holder. " 
In his speeches of 1844 a nd 1845 on West Indian 
emancipation, he took more advanced ground, 
referring to the hitherto unsuspected capabilities of 
the negro race, and displaying some sense of the 
gravity of the situation. "Whatever may appear 
at the moment, however contrasted the fortunes of 
the black and the white, yet is the planter's an un- 
safe and an unblest condition. Nature rights on 
the other side, and as power is ever stealing from the 
idle to the busy hand, it seems inevitable that a 
revolution is preparing, at no distant day, to set 
these disjointed matters right." 

After Emerson's return from Europe in 1848, he 
found the crisis appreciably nearer. In 1850 a 
peace which was no peace was patched up by the 
adoption in Congress of Clay's compromise measure. 
That compromise included the Fugitive Slave Law, 
and Webster, the idol of Massachusetts, had by its 
advocacy stepped from his pedestal in the conscience 
of his fellow-countrymen. In 1851, Emerson spoke 
to the citizens of Concord in plain terms. "The 
last year has forced us all into politics. There is an 



226 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

infamy in the air. I wake in the morning with a 
painful sensation which I carry about all day, and 
which, when traced home, is the odious remem- 
brance of that ignominy which has fallen on Massa- 
chusetts. I have lived all my life in this State, and 
never had any experience of personal inconvenience 
from the laws until now. They never came near me, 
to my discomfort, before. But the Act of Congress 
of September 18, 1850, is a law which every one of 
you will break on the earliest occasion — a law which 
no man can obey or abet the obeying without loss 
of self-respect and forfeiture of the name of a gentle- 
man." And in the journal of that year, he wrote: 
"Mr. Webster must learn that those to whom his 
name was once dear and honored disown him; that 
he who was their pride in the woods and mountains 
of New England is now their mortification. . . . 
He is a man who lives by his memory; a man 
of the past, not a man of faith and of hope. All 
the drops of his blood have eyes that look down- 
ward." The finality of this judgment is one with 
the finality of the verses of "Ichabod," wrung by 
the same event from the breast of the gentlest of our 
poets. 

As the intolerable arrogance of the slavery inter- 
est became more and more pronounced during the 
'fifties, and as the darkening war-clouds gathered 
over the nation, Emerson's voice was heard again 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 227 

and again in the plea for righteousness. In 185 1, 
he took the stump in behalf of the Free Soil nominee 
for the governorship of Massachusetts. In 1854, he 
spoke in New York in protest against the Fugitive 
Slave Law. In 1855, he lectured in Boston on the 
engrossing topic of the hour, speaking of "a statute 
which made justice and mercy subject to fine and 
imprisonment/' and which " uprooted the founda- 
tions of rectitude and denied the existence of God." 
The dastardly assault upon Sumner in 1856 evoked 
from Emerson a strong outburst of indignation. The 
John Brown raid of 1859 found him questioning 
the methods of that devoted fanatic, but sympathiz- 
ing with his spirit. It is the lecture on " Courage," 
read in Boston at the very time when Brown was 
lying in a Virginia prison under sentence of death, 
which contains the oft-quoted and memorable de- 
scription of "that new saint; than whom none purer 
or more brave was ever led by love of man into 
conflict and death, — a new saint, waiting yet his 
martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make 
the gallows glorious like the cross." And at a John 
Brown meeting held a few weeks after the execution, 
Emerson concluded his address with these words: 
"The sentiment of mercy is the natural recoil which 
the laws of the universe provide to protect mankind 
from destruction by savage passions. And our 
blind statesmen go up and down with committees 



228 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

of vigilance and safety, hunting for the origin of 
this new heresy. They will need a very vigilant 
committee, indeed, to find its birthplace, and a very 
strong force to root it out. For the arch-abolition- 
ist, older than Brown, and older than the Shenan- 
doah mountains, is Love, whose other name is 
Justice, which was before Alfred, before Lycurgus, 
before slavery, and will be after it." 

The volume of essays entitled "The Conduct of 
Life" was published in i860. It marks, in a sense, 
the beginning of Emerson's wider fame, for it was 
the first of his books to command a large immediate 
sale. The psychological moment in the public con- 
sciousness had come for him at last, and he stood 
clearly recognizable as one of the foremost spirits 
of his time. It must not be supposed, however, 
that the sale of this book, or of any book, brought 
him larger pecuniary returns in the absolute sense. 
His income from royalties was modest at the best, 
and did not do much to tide him over the war period 
of high cost of living and diminishing returns from 
his customary sources of revenue. The war was to 
make him distinctly poor, but he welcomed its out- 
break as a means of clearing the air. "We have 
been very homeless, some of us, for some years 
past, — say since 1850; but now we have a country 
again. Up to March 4, 1861, in the very place of 
law we found instead of it, war — now we have 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



229 



forced the conspiracy out-of-doors. Law is on this 
side and War on that." Visiting the Charlestown 
Navy Yard, he looked about him, and said: "Ah! 
sometimes gunpowder smells good." Long after- 
ward, he expressed his feeling in these words: "At 
the darkest moment in the history of the republic, 
when it looked as if the nation would be dismem- 
bered, pulverized into its original elements, the at- 
tack on Fort Sumter crystallized the North into a 
unit, and the hope of mankind was saved." 

Early in 1862, Emerson was invited to give an anti- 
slavery address in Washington. He urged eman- 
cipation, calling it "the demand of civilization," 
although he thought, as before, that it might suita- 
bly be accompanied by compensation for the prop- 
erty rights it should destroy. When, later in that 
year, the Proclamation was put forth, he spoke at 
a meeting in Boston, saying that "this act makes 
that the lives of our heroes have not been sacrificed 
in vain," that by it "the government has assured 
itself of the best constituency in the world." When 
the Proclamation went into effect the first day of 
the year following, the "Boston Hymn" was his 
contribution to the celebration of the occasion. 
Concord was the scene, and Lexington Day, 1865, 
the time, of his address upon the character of the 
martyred President, in which he said of Lincoln: 
"He is the true history of the American people in his 



230 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

time. Step by step he walked before them; slow 
with their slowness, quickening his march by theirs, 
the true representative of this continent; an entirely 
public man; the pulse of twenty millions throbbing 
in his heart, the thought of their minds articulated 
by his tongue." And a few weeks later he spoke 
briefly but feelingly at the Harvard commemoration. 
Of Emerson's appearance at those exercises, Lowell, 
whose "Ode" made them chiefly glorious, hardly 
exaggerates when he says: "To him more than to 
all other causes together did the young martyrs of 
our civil war owe the sustaining strength of thought- 
ful heroism that is so touching in every record of 
their lives." He was indeed the Mazzini of our 
American Risorgimento. 

The early 'sixties bereft Emerson of two of his 
closest friends, Theodore Parker, who died in i860, 
and Thoreau, who died in 1862. In 1863, he was 
appointed to the West Point board of official visitors. 
That year also he addressed, for the second time, 
the students of Dartmouth and Waterville. In 

1865, his son Edward was graduated from Harvard, 
and his daughter Ellen married William H. Forbes. 
In 1868, his brother William died at Concord. In 

1866, his alma mater, who in the earlier days had 
held him in much suspicion, took him to her own, 
made him a Doctor of Laws, and appointed him to 
her Board of Overseers, upon which he served for 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 231 

twelve years. And in 1867, he officiated at Harvard 
as Phi Beta Kappa orator for the second time, just 
thirty years after "The American Scholar" had 
proclaimed a new gospel at Cambridge. 

Of lecturing there was still no end, and all through 
the 'sixties we find him speaking in many places and 
on all sorts of subjects. Besides the occasions already 
specified, there were lectures in the pulpit made 
vacant by Parker's death, half a dozen regular 
courses in Boston, and single addresses given as 
far afield as Montreal and Chicago. Then there 
was the course of sixteen Harvard lectures on "The 
Natural History of the Intellect," given in 1870, and 
repeated the following year. In this course he came 
nearer than elsewhere to the formulation of a sys- 
tematic philosophy, which, after all, is not saying 
very much. "I write anecdotes of the intellect, a 
sort of Farmers' Almanac of mental moods," he 
said of himself, and of the maker of systems, " 'Tis 
the gnat grasping the world." After this task was 
done, he wrote to Carlyle: "I doubt the experts in 
philosophy will not praise my discourses; — but the 
topics give me room for my guesses, criticism, admi- 
rations, and experiences with the accepted masters, 
and also the lessons I have learned from the hidden 
great." In 1867, he published "May Day," his 
second volume of poems, and in 1870, "Society 
and Solitude." 



232 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Just after he had finished his second term of 
lecturing at Harvard, in the spring of 1871, Emerson 
was invited to accompany John M. Forbes (whose 
son had married Emerson's daughter) on a six 
weeks' trip to California. It proved a welcome 
diversion, for he was tired and a little disheartened. 
The start was made in April, and the party num- 
bered twelve. The journey was luxuriously made 
in a private car, and he thoroughly enjoyed it. An 
occasional lecture was given, and his discourse on 
"Immortality" one Sunday evening in San Francisco 
so impressed an ingenuous newspaper reporter as to 
result in the following remarks, printed next morn- 
ing. "All left the church feeling that an elegant 
tribute had been paid to the creative genius of the 
Great First Cause, and that a masterly use of the 
English language had contributed to that end." 
After a month in California, which included a view 
of the big trees and a visit to the Yosemite, the party 
started homeward, stopping at Salt Lake City, 
where a call was made upon that very practical 
and un-Emersonian philosopher, Brigham Young, 
who seemed never to have heard of his visitor. 
Some ingenious writer might find in this interview a 
theme for an " imaginary conversation " after the 
manner of Landor. Another stop was made at Niag- 
ara, and the first days of summer found the traveler 
once more at home in Concord. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 233 

IX 

Of the year (1871-1872) following Emerson's 
return from the Pacific coast there is little to record. 
There were a few occasional addresses, the customary 
western lecture-tour, and, in the spring, another 
series of platform appearances in Boston. One 
midsummer morning of 1872, when he had just 
returned from an engagement at Amherst, he was 
awakened by the crackling of fire, and discovered 
that his house was burning at the roof. He called 
for help, which quickly came, but not quickly enough 
to save the dwelling from destruction. But the 
neighbors contrived to get out nearly everything 
that was movable. It had rained during the night, 
and the exposure was a considerable shock to Em- 
erson's weakened constitution, although there were 
no serious immediate consequences. But it proba- 
bly hastened the mental breakdown of his last years, 
of which signs were already apparent. 

Many offers of shelter were at once made to the 
homeless family, which was soon reestablished under 
the hospitable roof of the Old Manse, while a 
temporary study was fitted up for Emerson in the 
Court House. This was clearly the time for his 
friends to bestir themselves, and more substantial 
aid quickly followed. As the result of a friendly 
conspiracy, he was promptly presented with a 



234 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

check for five thousand dollars, and later subscrip- 
tions to the fund added nearly twelve thousand 
dollars to that amount: these subscriptions came in 
almost spontaneously when the word was passed 
about that a fund was being collected. When the 
presentation was made by Mr. E. R. Hoar, it was 
accompanied by the following whimsical explana- 
tion. "I told him, by way of prelude, that some of 
his friends had made him treasurer of an association 
who wished him to go to England and examine 
Warwick Castle and other noted houses that had 
been recently injured by fire, in order to get the 
best ideas possible for restoration, and then to apply 
them to a house which the association was formed 
to restore in this neighborhood.' ' Emerson was 
deeply affected by this tribute of friendship, and ac- 
cepted it in the spirit which prompted the offering. 
He particularly asked for a full list of the contribu- 
tors, saying: "You may be sure that I shall not rest 
till I have learned them, every one, to repeat to 
myself at night and at morning. " 

Emerson also accepted, with some hesitation, the 
suggestion of a trip abroad, and October found him 
in New York prepared to set sail. Before leav- 
ing, he spoke at the dinner arranged in honor of 
Froude's visit, and then, on the 28th of the month, 
accompanied by his daughter Ellen, he left his 
native shores for the third and last time. His travels 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 235 

occupied about six months, and took him to England, 
Paris, Rome, and Egypt. The sea voyage proved a 
tonic, and soon after landing he addressed an Eng- 
lish audience with much of his old readiness and 
force. He saw Carlyle again, as " strong in person 
and manners as ever," and Lowell, and Bancroft, 
and many other old friends. The Nile journey was 
made in January, 1873, and took him as far as 
Philae. He thus summarized his impression of 
Egypt: "All this journey is a perpetual humiliation, 
satirizing and whipping our ignorance. The people 
despise us because we are helpless babies, who 
cannot speak or understand a word they say; the 
sphinxes scorn dunces; the obelisks, the temple- 
walls, defy us with their histories which we cannot 
spell." Returning to England by way of Naples, 
Rome, Florence, and Paris, he had good talk (always 
more interesting to him than any sights) on the way 
with Grimm, and Lowell, and Renan, and Taine, 
and Tourguenieff. A round of social engagements 
kept him busy in England. In London, he was 
with Gladstone, Browning, and Carlyle, in Oxford 
with Max Miiller, Jowett, and Ruskin, in Edinburgh 
with many old friends made at the time of his earlier 
visit. He reached his Concord home in May, when 
the whole town turned out to greet him, and to escort 
him in triumph to the house that had been rebuilt 
during his absence. 



236 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Occasion may be taken to introduce at this point, 
as the story of Emerson's life is rounding to its close, 
the personal description which every biography 
should include. The quotations that follow are from 
the account by Dr. Holmes. " Emerson's personal 
appearance was that of a scholar, the descendant ot 
scholars. He was tall and slender, with the com- 
plexion which is bred in the alcove and not in the 
open air. He used to tell his son Edward that he 
measured six feet in his shoes, but his son thinks he 
could hardly have straightened himself to that height 
in his later years. He was very light for a man of his 
stature. . . . His face was thin, his nose somewhat > f i 
accipitrine, casting a broad shadow; his mouth rather I 
wide, well formed and well closed, carrying a ques-jl 
tion and an assertion in its finely finished curves ; the 
lower lip a little prominent, the chin shapely and 
firm, as becomes the corner-stone of the countenance. 
His expression was calm, sedate, kindly, with that 
look of refinement, centring about the lips, which is 
rarely found in the male New Englander, unless the 
family features have been for two or three cultivated . 
generations the battlefield and the playground of f 
varied thoughts and complex emotions as well as the 
sensuous and nutritive port of entry. His whole look 
was irradiated by an ever active inquiring intelli- 
gence. His manner was noble and gracious. . . . 
His hair was brown, quite fine, and, till he was fifty, 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 237 

very thick. His eyes were of the strongest and 
brightest blue." 

The rest of Emerson's life-story is soon told. In 
the way of books, there was " Parnassus," (1874,) 
a collection of his favorite poems, " Letters and 
Social Aims," (1875,) and a revised edition of the 
" Poems" (1878). In the way of lectures, there was 
the centennial address made in 1875 at the unveil- 
ing of the statue of the Minute-Man in Concord, the 
address of 1876 to the students of the University of 
Virginia, the address of 1879 to the divinity students 
at Cambridge, and the address of 1881 on Carlyle 
at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The other 
addresses made during these closing years were 
repetitions of lectures that had done duty long 
before. The meetings of the Concord School of 
Philosophy, beginning in 1878, numbered Emerson 
among their attendants, and in 1880 he gave one 
of his lectures before the school. How he was 
regarded in England in these latter days is shown 
by his nomination in 1874, for the honorary post 
of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. 
His opponent was no less a personage than Dis- 
raeli, who won the election by seven hundred votes 
to Emerson's five hundred. But the fact of his 
nomination, to say nothing of the large vote he re- 
ceived, was an extraordinary tribute to his character 
and his fame. He counted that vote as "quite 



238 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the fairest laurel" that had ever fallen to his 
share. 

The decay of Emerson's faculties in this Indian 
summer of his life was chiefly marked by aphasia 
and increasing forget fulness. It may be illustrated 
by what he was heard to say to a friend at Long- 
fellow's funeral. "That gentleman was a sweet, 
beautiful soul, but I have entirely forgotten his 
name." His biographer, Elliot Cabot, who was 
much with him at this time, thus writes: "To me 
there was nothing sad in his condition; it was obvi- 
ous enough that he was but the shadow of himself, 
but the substance was there, only a little removed. 
The old alertness and incisiveness were gone, but 
there was no confusion of ideas, and the objects of 
interest were what they always had been. He was 
often at a loss for a word, but no consciousness of 
this or of any other disability seemed to trouble 
him. Nor was there any appearance of effort to 
keep up the conversation." His friend and disciple, 
Moncure Conway, who last saw him in 1880, gives 
us this account: "The intensity of his silent attention 
to every word that was said was painful, suggesting 
a concentration of his powers to break through the 
invisible walls closing around them. Yet his face 
was serene; he was even cheerful, and joined in our 
laughter at some letters his eldest daughter had 
preserved, from young girls, trying to coax autograph 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 239 

letters, and in one case asking for what price he 
would write a valedictory address she had to deliver 
at college. He was still able to joke about his 
1 naughty memory/ and no complaint came from 
him when he once rallied himself on living too long. 
Emerson appeared to me strangely beautiful at 
this time, and the sweetness of his voice, when he 
spoke of the love and providence at his side, is quite 
indescribable.' ' With this pleasant picture in our 
memory, we may pass on to the story of his death. 

The end came in the spring of 1882, when a cold, 
settling into pneumonia, laid him prostrate. There 
was little suffering, and it was less than a week 
that he was actually confined to his bed. His mind 
wandered at times, but there was no real delirium, 
and he knew his friends to the last. He died Thurs- 
day, April 27, and was buried the following Sunday 
in Sleepy Hollow, "at the foot of a tall pine-tree 
upon the top of the ridge in the highest part of the 
grounds." The services were conducted by Dr. 
W. H. Furness, and the speakers were Dr. James 
Freeman Clarke and Judge E. Rockwood Hoar. 
In contemplation of the pure and noble life thus 
ended, one thinks, as of Milton's Samson, that 
"nothing is here for tears;" or one recalls E. C. 
Stedman's fine phrase about Landor, who "at death 
flung off somewhere into the aether still facing the 
daybreak and worshipped by many rising stars;" 



240 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

or with his biographer, finds his last thought of Em- 
erson tinged with the rosy flush of Emerson's own 
verses, 

"Spring still makes spring in the mind 
When sixty years are told; 
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, 
And we are never old. 
Over the winter glaciers 
I see the summer glow, 
And through the wild-piled snow-drift 
The warm rosebuds below." 

And for a less fleeting last memory, because a less 
emotional one, we may perhaps do no better than 
cite Lord Morley's summary, to the effect that 
" Emerson remains among the most persuasive and 
inspiring of those who by word and example rebuke 
our despondency, purify our sight, awaken us from 
the deadening slumbers of convention and con- 
formity, exorcise the pestering imps of vanity, and 
lift men up from low thoughts and sullen moods of 
helplessness and impiety.' ' 





s^&^Z^ry*^^ 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 



I 

Among the satellites of Emerson in the Concord 
system, there was one whose orbit was so eccentric 
that the computation of its elements has not yet 
been exactly determined. A few people understood 
Thoreau during his lifetime, but by the general 
public he was misjudged, when not absolutely 
ignored. His short life was spent almost wholly 
within a few miles of his native town; its influence 
was almost unfelt outside the narrow circle of his 
personal acquaintance. He wrote industriously for 
a quarter of a century, but published only two books 
during his lifetime, and those with difficulty and with 
results so discouraging that he gave up all thought 
of earning either a living or a reputation by his 
writings. Yet he was hardly laid in his grave when 
the world began to take note of him. Book after 
book was unearthed from the mass of his manu- 
scripts, and his vogue grew from year to year. A 
generation after his death, his " works" made a 
substantial library of ten or more volumes, and 

241 



242 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

some twenty years later, a definitive edition in a 
score of volumes attested the permanence of his 
fame. Even this edition took no account of a consid- 
erable quantity of manuscript material, some of 
which has found other forms of publication, and 
some of which has not yet been printed. When we 
look back toward his life from our present twentieth 
century point of vantage, it is easily seen that he was 
the principal figure among those who lived in the 
circle of Emerson's radiance and felt directly the 
inspiration of his example. 

Among the influences that have thus done tardy 
but adequate justice to one of the most original and 
thoughtful of American writers we must take account 
of his discovery by the friendly students of our 
literature in the mother-country. In the 'seventies 
and 'eighties, a number of English critics found their 
way to Thoreau, and were both delighted and stimu- 
lated by the fresh quality of his thought and style. 
These critics were by no means simply laudatory; 
Stevenson called him a skulker and a prig, and 
Morley a " whimsical egotist," but they both, and 
many others with them, thought him well worth 
reading, and by their efforts his public became 
widely extended. Of recent years, he has even been 
taken up by continental critics, and has almost won 
a place beside Cooper and Poe and Whitman in the 
small group of American writers who have come to 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 243 

command a cosmopolitan audience. This foreign 
recognition of American literature has always been 
somewhat haphazard and undiscriminating, and its 
confused sense of values has made the judicious 
among us grieve, but it has also had a sort of reflex 
effect upon us in opening our own eyes to qualities 
that we might otherwise have failed to appreciate. 
About the year 1773, the year of the Boston Tea 
Party, a Jersey man named John Thoreau, the 
younger son of a merchant family of substance, 
emigrated to New England, and opened a store on 
the Long Wharf in Boston. In 1781, the year of 
Yorktown, he married a Scotch- woman named 
Jane Burns. After her death some fifteen years 
later, he removed to Concord, and died soon there- 
after leaving a son and three daughters. The son, 
named for his father, carried on the family business 
of storekeeping at Concord, but not with his father's 
success. Afterward he turned his attention to 
pencil-making, and became moderately prosperous. 
Married in 181 2 to Cynthia Dunbar, he had four 
children, two of each sex, brought them up to live 
by principle and to love books, rounded out an 
unobtrusive life, and died in 1859. His widow 
lived to the venerable age of eighty-five, and died 
in 1872. All four of the children became teachers; 
the two oldest, John and Helen, died at a compara- 
tively early age; Henry, the subject of the present 



244 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

biography, lived to his forty-fifth year, and Sophia, 
the youngest of the four, survived him by fourteen 
years. None of the four was married, but the family 
in America continued to be represented by Maria, 
Henry's aunt, the youngest child of the orginal 
John Thoreau, who lived until 1881. With her the 
last person in this country to bear the name of 
Thoreau passed away. 

A brief characterization of Henry's parents is a 
necessary feature of any account of the environment 
which shaped his life. John Thoreau is thus de- 
scribed by Henry in a letter written to announce his 
father's death: "I think I may say that he was 
wholly unpretending; and there was this peculiarity 
in his aim; that though he had pecuniary difficulties 
to contend with the greater part of his life, he always 
studied hard to make a good article, pencil or other, 
(for he practiced various arts), and was never satis- 
fied with what he produced. Nor was he ever dis- 
posed in the least to put off a poor one for the sake 
of pecuniary gain, — as if he labored for a higher 
end." Mrs. Marble speaks of him as exemplifying 
"The reticent composure of the Quaker and the 
sturdy, industrious qualities of his Scotch inheritance, 
mingled with deft and inventive skill," and calls him 
" punctilious in every detail of life, reserved before 
strangers yet an interesting companion to friends, 
and deeply respected by his townsmen." Mr. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 245 

Sanborn describes him as " a grave and silent, but 
inwardly cheerful and social person, who found no 
difficulty in giving his wife the lead in all affairs. " 
In this he was probably wise, for his wife, Henry's 
mother, was a woman who would have taken the lead 
in any case. She was a kindly woman with a sharp 
tongue, and usually monopolized the conversation. 
"One of the most unceasing talkers ever seen in Con- 
cord," says Mr. Sanborn, which is saying much, when 
we remember the amount and variety of talk that 
went on in Concord. Old Dr. Ripley once wrote in 
a letter: "I meant to have filled a page with senti- 
ments. But a kind neighbor, Mrs. Thoreau, has been 
here more than an hour. This letter must go in the 
mail to-day." She was a partisan in many local 
quarrels — Trinitarian, antimasonic, and antislavery 
— and was not without a touch of what seemed 
frivolity to some of her associates. Calling one day 
on Miss Mary Emerson (being seventy years old 
and her hostess eighty-seven), she wore long and 
brilliant bonnet-ribbons. As her guest rose to de- 
part, Miss Emerson said: "Perhaps you noticed, 
Mrs. Thoreau, that I closed my eyes during your 
call. I did so because I did not wish to look on the 
ribbons you are wearing, so unsuitable for a child of 
God and a person of your years." 

Such were the parents of the child of genius who 
was born in Concord July 12, 181 7, and who says 



246 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

in his journal: "I was baptized in the old meeting- 
house by Dr. Ripley when I was three months, and 
did not cry." David and Henry were the names 
given him at baptism and it was not until his later 
college days that he reversed their order, since 
" Henry" was the one by which he was always called. 
Ellery Channing thus describes the house in which 
Thoreau was born: "It was a perfect piece of our 
old New England style of building, with its gray, 
unpainted boards, its grassy, unfenced door-yard. 
The house is somewhat isolate and remote from 
thoroughfares ; on the Virginia road, an old-fashioned, 
winding, at length deserted pathway, the more 
smiling for its forked orchards, tumbling walls, and 
mossy banks. About it are pleasant sunny meadows, 
deep with their beds of peat, so cheering with its 
homely, hearth-like fragrance; and in front runs a 
constant stream." The name, "Virginia road," is 
accounted for by the tradition that a freed Virginia 
negro found his way to the outskirts of Concord, 
and built a cabin there. It was a fitting birthplace 
for a man whose house was frequently a place of 
refuge for fugitive negroes, and whose chief public 
activity was put forth in connection with the anti- 
slavery agitation. The Concord into which Thoreau 
was born was a town of about two thousand inhabi- 
tants. It is worthy of note that, although his family 
had but recently settled in Concord, he was almost 






HENRY DAVID THOREAU 247 

the only one of the famous group of Concord authors 
who could claim the town as a birthplace. And from 
the time when he was graduated at Cambridge, and 
returned to Concord to live, the sum of all his jour- 
neyings to other regions amounted to only about 
a year. In Alcott's words, "Thoreau thought he 
lived in the centre of the universe, and would annex 
the rest of the planet to Concord." 

The Thoreau family moved about a good deal dur- 
ing Henry's childhood. Before he was two years old, 
they were settled in Chelmsford, where "we lived 
near the meeting-house, where they kept the powder 
in the garret." Boston was the family home from 
1821 to 1823, and there the boy first went to school. 
From his sixth year to his sixteenth (1823-1833), 
when he entered Harvard, his family remained in 
Concord, frequently moving from one house to 
another. Here the boy got his preliminary educa- 
tion, first in the village schools, and then in the 
Concord Academy. It was this institution that 
fitted him (or "made unfit," to use his own words) 
for college. His boyhood was happily occupied 
with work and play. He did the family chores, 
drove the family cow to pasture, and roamed about 
the woods and meadows. Bits of anecdote relating 
to his childhood have been preserved, as is usually 
the case with precocious children. Once when 
about four, his lesson in the New England Primer 



248 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

taught him that he must die, but he was dubious 
about the joys of the heavenly life. He had been 
coasting, but his sled was a cheap one, and he was 
afraid he could not take it to so fine a place as heaven. 
"The boys say it is not shod with iron, and not 
worth a cent." He was a stoical little chap, nick- 
named " judge" for his seriousness, and he had an 
ingrained sense of justice. But he seems, on the 
whole, to have been a fairly genuine boy, sensitive, 
fun-loving, and affectionate. 

The educational tradition was strong in the 
Thoreau family, and Henry must go to college, 
although it was a serious matter to provide for his 
expenses, even in those days of the simple educa- 
tional life. Having been duly grounded in his 
classics at the Academy, he was entered at Harvard 
in 1833, when sixteen years old. His room was in 
Hollis, where he had "many and noisy neighbors, 
and a residence in the fourth story." Various mem- 
bers of the family contributed to his modest college 
expenses, and he was a beneficiary, to a small extent, 
of the college funds set apart for the aid of deserving 
students. He also helped to support himself by oc- 
casional terms of teaching. One winter, he taught 
the school at Canton, where he lived at the home of 
Orestes Brownson, then a Protestant minister in 
that town. The influence of that restless thinker 
doubtless counted for something in Thoreau's 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 249 

development, although he was as far as possible 
from following Brownson to the haven in which his 
philosophic doubts ultimately found rest. At Har- 
vard, he was inspired by the instruction of Channing, 
to whom many other young men of that generation 
paid tribute, but the college teaching as a whole 
did not excite him to much enthusiasm, and he got 
his education by absorption, rather than by any 
direct process of inculcation. The library rather 
than the class-room was his delight, and he read 
widely and deeply in classical English literature. 

One of his classmates, John Weiss, has left us a 
vivid description of Thoreau as a collegian. "He 
was cold and unimpressible. The touch of his 
hand was moist and indifferent, as if he had taken up 
something when he saw your hand coming, and 
caught your grasp upon it. How the prominent 
grey-blue eyes seemed to rove down the path, just 
in advance of his feet, as his grave Indian stride 
carried him down to University Hall. He did not 
care for people; his class-mates seemed very remote. 
This reverie hung always about him, and not so 
loosely as the odd garments which the pious house- 
hold care furnished. Thought had not yet awakened 
his countenance; it was serene, but rather dull, 
rather plodding. The lips were not yet firm; there 
was almost a look of smug satisfaction lurking 
round their corners. It is plain now that he was 



250 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

preparing to hold his future views with great serious- 
ness and personal appreciation of their importance. 
The nose was prominent, but its curve fell forward 
without firmness over the upper lip, and we remem- 
ber him as looking very much like some Egyptian 
sculptures of faces, large-featured, but brooding, 
immobile, fixed in a mystic egoism. Yet his eyes 
were sometimes searching as if he had dropped, or 
expected to find, something. In fact, his eyes seldom 
left the ground, even in his most earnest conversa- 
tions with you." We may supplement this objective 
impression, with Thoreau's own statement made in 
a letter to the secretary of his class. "Though 
bodily I have been a member of Harvard University, 
heart and soul I have been far away among the 
scenes of my boyhood. Those hours that should 
have been devoted to study have been spent in 
scouring the woods and exploring the lakes and 
streams of my native village. Immured within the 
dark but classic walls of a Stoughton or a Hollis, 
my spirit yearned for the sympathy of my old and 
almost forgotten friend, Nature." 

The introspective bent of the boy's disposition, 
thus early marked, his need for solitude and for 
undisturbed communion with nature and his own 
thoughts, became more pronounced as the years 
went on. In a whimsical passage in "Walden," he 
tells us how the social side of life in Concord im- 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 251 

pressed him, and in how restive a mood he dwelt 
among his fellows. "I observed that the vitals of 
the village were the grocery, the bar-room, the post- 
office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part of the 
machinery, they kept a bell, a big gun, and a fire 
engine at convenient places, and the houses were so 
arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes 
and fronting one another, so that every traveler had 
to run the gauntlet, and every man, woman, and 
child might get a lick at him. . . . Signs were hung 
out on all sides to allure him; some to catch him by 
the appetite as the tavern or victualing cellar; some 
by the fancy, as the dry-goods store or the jeweler's ; 
and others by the hair, the feet, or the skirts, as the 
barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor. Besides there 
was a still more terrible standing invitation to call 
at every one of these houses, and company expected 
about these times. For the most part I escaped 
wonderfully from these dangers, either by proceed- 
ing at once boldly and without deliberation to the 
goal, as is recommended to those who run the gaunt- 
let, or by keeping my thoughts on high things like 
Orpheus, who, 'loudly singing the praises of the 
god to his lyre, drowned the voices of the Sirens, and 
kept out of danger.' Sometimes, I bolted suddenly, 
and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did 
not stand much about gracefulness, and never hesi- 
tated at a gap in a fence. I was even accustomed to 



252 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

make an irruption into some houses, where I was 
well entertained, and after leaving the kernels and 
the very last sieveful of news, what had subsided, 
the prospects of war and peace, and whether the 
world was likely to hold together much longer, I 
was let out through the rear avenues, and so escaped 
to the woods again.'' All this does not mean that 
Thoreau was a shy and faun-like creature; still less 
that he was a victim of misanthropy; it means only 
that often he found himself his own best companion, 
and was determined to resist those social importuni- 
ties which, if a man submit to them, leave him no 
time for the development of the inner life and for 
quiet intellectual growth. 

Recurring to his college days, it seems that Tho- 
reau, although anything but imbued with the college 
spirit, kept a fair rank in his class, and carried off 
some small spoil of commencement honors. His 
"part" was a share in what was called a "confer- 
ence" on "The Commercial Spirit," and it is not 
difficult to detect the Emersonian influence, although 
with a difference, in what he said. "We are to look 
chiefly for the origin of the commercial spirit, and 
the power that still cherishes and maintains it, in a 
blind and unmanly love of wealth. Wherever this 
exists, it is too sure to become the ruling spirit; and, 
as a natural consequence, it infuses into all our 
thoughts and affections a degree of its own selfish- 






HENRY DAVID THOREAU 253 

ness; we become selfish in our patriotism, selfish in 
our domestic relations, selfish in our religion. Let 
men, true to their natures, cultivate the moral affec- 
tions, lead manly and independent lives; let them 
make riches the means and not the end of existence, 
and we shall hear no more of the commercial spirit. 
The sea will not stagnate, the earth will be as green 
as ever, and the air as pure. This curious world 
which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is con- 
venient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more 
to be admired and enjoyed than used." He left 
Harvard with President Quincy's certificate stating 
that "his rank was high as a scholar in all the 
branches, and his morals and general conduct unex- 
ceptionable and exemplary." 

II 

Furnished with this testimonial, and with letters 
of similar tenor from Dr. Ripley and Emerson, 
Thoreau began to look about for an opening in the 
teaching profession — the only profession that seemed 
available to him. Two schools as far apart as Vir- 
ginia and Maine, were suggested to him, but he 
failed in securing an appointment to either, and 
fell back upon the schools of Concord, where he 
taught for brief periods in 1837 and 1838. The 
question of corporal punishment was the rock upon 



254 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

which these efforts split. He substituted moral 
suasion for that time-honored instrument of disci- 
pline, the ferule, and the School Committee was 
naturally indignant at the innovation. He was 
remonstrated with, and complied, one day, to the 
extent of "feruling six of his pupils after school, one 
of whom was the maid-servant in his own house." 
But his conscience troubled him, and he soon in- 
formed the Committee "that he should no longer 
keep their school, as they interfered with his arrange- 
ments." His next resource was a private school, 
opened in his own house in the summer of 1838, 
and his brother John was taken into partnership. 
Afterwards, the classes were enlarged, transferred 
to rooms in the Concord Academy, and continued 
until early in 1841, when school- teaching was finally 
abandoned, and Thoreau became a member of 
Emerson's household. The teaching profession 
suffered a sad loss when he gave it up, for he loved 
children, understood their ways of thinking, and 
knew how to cultivate their imagination. Many a 
child was entranced by his retelling of classical 
myths and Indian legends; many a child whom he 
took upon country rambles gained from his tutelage 
an insight into the meaning of nature, its hidden 
ways and purposes. 

Thoreau's period of teaching was also the period 
of the one romantic passion of his life. Among the 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 255 

oldest friends of the family was Mrs. Joseph Ward, 
the widow of a Revolutionary officer. She came to 
Concord with her daughter in 1833, and spent much 
of her time there for several years, the guest of 
Thoreau's aunts and mother. There were also 
grandchildren, a boy and a girl, who came to visit 
them. The boy of eleven went to John and Henry's 
school, and the sister of seventeen, whose name was 
Ellen Sewall, found her way into the hearts of both 
the brothers. Henry seems to have been unwilling 
to stand in the way of John's happiness; as one of 
his biographers says: " Henry's undoubted love for 
this young girl was noble in its purity and renuncia- 
tion, and it has tinted with its ideal light all his 
later heart-life, and given rare spirituality to his 
words upon love and marriage." The girl's feeling 
for either brother was probably no more than one of 
pleasant friendship, for soon after John Thoreau's 
death she married a clergyman, and lived happily 
to a ripe old age. Emerson thought there was a 
reference to this boyish love in the verses entitled 
" Sympathy," contributed by Thoreau in 1840 to 
"The Dial." The allusion is veiled, and is to be 
sought, if anywhere, in the following stanza: 

"Eternity may not the chance repeat; 

But I must tread my single way alone, 
In sad remembrance that we once did meet, 
And know that bliss irrevocably gone." 



256 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

These were among the first of the many snatches 
of verse that came from Thoreau's pen. He was an 
even more desultory poet than Emerson, and had 
little of the elder poet's magic of phrasing and ima- 
gery. In 1838, he wrote his first lecture for the Con- 
cord Lyceum, his subject being " Society.' ' There 
was hardly a year of his subsequent life when he did 
not again stand upon the Lyceum platform of his 
native town. It was in the year before, a few weeks 
after his leaving college, that he began "the big red 
Journal," recording therein from day to day his 
experience, both inward and outward. By the sum- 
mer of 1840 this journal, into which he poured the 
contents of his mind, both trivial and significant, 
had filled some six hundred large pages, and by the 
beginning of the following year, another four hun- 
dred pages had been added: new volumes followed 
in regular succession, for the practice was continued 
throughout his life. This progressive self-revelation 
puts us upon very intimate terms with the writer; 
few men of letters have ever exposed their mental 
processes so minutely. Even in his college days, 
Thoreau had commended the practice of " keeping 
a private journal or record of our thoughts, feelings, 
studies, and daily experience." He was only seven- 
teen when he wrote the following words in a college 
" theme." "If each one would employ a certain 
portion of each day in looking back upon the time 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 257 

which has passed, and in writing down his thoughts 
and feelings, in reckoning up his daily gains, that 
he may be able to detect whatever false coins may 
have crept into his coffers, and, as it were, in settling 
accounts with his mind, — not only would his daily 
experience be increased, since his feelings and ideas 
would thus be more clearly defined, — but he would 
be ready to turn over a new leaf (having carefully 
perused the preceding one) and would not continue 
to glance carelessly over the same page, without 
being able to distinguish it from a new one." 

Quite a number of Thoreau's college exercises 
have been preserved, and they indicate clearly his 
future vocation. The intellectual poise and vigor- 
ous independence which were to characterize his 
later writings are distinctly foreshadowed in these 
early flights. Here, for example, we have the prose- 
poet of nature in embryo: "Now is my attention 
engaged by a truant hawk, as, like a messenger 
from those ethereal regions, he issues from the 
bosom of a cloud, and, at first a mere speck in the 
distance, comes circling inward, exploring every 
seeming creek, and rounding every jutting precipice. 
And now, his mission ended, what can be more 
majestic than his stately flight, as he wheels around 
some towering pine, enveloped in a cloud of smaller 
birds that have united to expel him from their prem- 
ises.' ' Here is the note of protest, so frequently 



258 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

sounded in after years, against the subservient 
attitude toward literary tradition. "The aspirant 
to fame must breathe the atmosphere of foreign 
parts, and learn to talk about things which the 
homebred student never dreamed of, if he would 
have his talents appreciated or his opinion regarded 
by his countrymen. Ours are authors of the day, 
they bid fair to outlive their works; they are too 
fashionable to write for posterity. True, there are 
some among us, who can contemplate the babbling 
brook, without, in imagination, polluting its waters 
with a mill-wheel; but even they are prone to sing 
of skylarks and nightingales perched on hedges, to 
the neglect of the homely robin-redbreast and the 
straggling rail-fences of their own native land." 

In the summer of 1839, Henry and John Thoreau 
engaged in an outing which was destined to have 
important literary consequences. It took the form 
of a bold voyage of exploration, in a boat of their 
own building, down the Concord River to its con- 
fluence with the Merrimack and thence up the latter 
stream to Concord, New Hampshire. This venture 
was responsible for Thoreau's first book, which 
was not, however, to see the light of publication for 
ten years. The beginning of the expedition is thus 
described: "At length, on Saturday, the last day of 
August, 1839, we two, brothers, and natives of Con- 
cord, weighed anchor in this river port; for Concord, 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 259 

too, lies under the sun, a port of entry and departure 
for the bodies as well as the souls of men; one shore 
at least exempted from all duties but such as an 
honest man will gladly discharge. A warm drizzling 
rain had obscured the morning, and threatened to 
delay our voyage, but at length the leaves and grass 
were dried, and it came out a mild afternoon, as 
serene and fresh as if Nature were maturing some 
greater scheme of her own. After this long dripping 
and oozing from every pore, she began to respire 
again more healthily than ever. So with a vigorous 
shove we launched our boat from the bank, while 
the flags and bulrushes courtesied a God-speed, and 
dropped silently down the stream. Our boat, which 
had cost us a week's labor in the spring, was in form 
like a fisherman's dory, fifteen feet long by three 
and a half in breadth at the widest part, painted 
green below, with a border of blue, with reference 
to the two elements in which it was to spend its 
existence. It had been loaded the evening before 
at our door, half a mile from the river, with potatoes 
and melons from a patch which we had cultivated, 
and a few utensils, and was provided with wheels 
in order to be rolled around falls, as well as with two 
sets of oars, and several slender poles for shoving in 
shallow places, and also two masts, one of which 
served for a tent pole at night; for a buffalo-skin 
was to be our bed, and a tent of cotton cloth our 



2 6o LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

roof. . . . Some village friends stood upon a prom- 
ontory lower down the stream to wave us a last 
farewell; but we, having already performed these 
shore rites, with excusable reserve, as befits those 
who are embarked on unusual enterprises, who be- 
hold but speak not, silently glided past the firm lands 
of Concord, both peopled cape and lonely summer 
meadow, with steady sweeps." Thus begins the ac- 
tual story of the voyage which is known to all lovers 
of literature from "A Week on the Concord and 
Merrimack Rivers," the first of Thoreau's books. 

This expedition was perhaps the most note- 
worthy incident of Thoreau's life during his school- 
teaching period. He held his brother John in the 
deepest affection, and few brothers have lived upon 
terms of such intimacy. Probably the severest 
personal grief that Henry ever knew was occasioned 
by John's untimely death in 1842, a victim of tetanus. 
The missing place was filled, in a way, by Ellery 
Channing, a young man of Thoreau's own age, 
who had come the year before to live in Concord, 
bringing with him his bride, the sister of Margaret 
Fuller. Thoreau became warmly attached to Chan- 
ning, who became the closest of his friends, remained 
his life-long neighbor, and, after his death, became 
the first of his biographers. Thoreau acquired 
many other friendships during these years of early 
manhood. This was precisely the time when tran- 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 261 

scendentalism became focussed in Concord, and 
Thoreau was welcomed by all the members of the 
circle. It is recorded that he was present one even- 
ing as early as May, 1840, when the circle met to 
discuss "The inspiration of the Prophet and Bard, 
the nature of Poetry, and the causes of the sterility 
of Poetic Inspiration in our age and country." 
Although on the best of terms with the transcen- 
dentalists, and a continuous contributor to "The 
Dial," Thoreau might hardly be described as one 
of them. While he by no means held himself aloof 
from them, as Hawthorne did, he was the last man 
in the world to become the disciple of a school, and he 
abated no jot of his intellectual independence on 
account of his association with Alcott and Emerson. 
He was affected, as the others were, by the Zeitgeist, 
and the studies that helped to shape their thought 
(particularly the readings in Oriental wisdom) 
helped also to shape his; but he was too much of a 
realist, and had too clear a sense of the adjustment 
of means to ends, to be lifted to their perilous and 
cloudy heights of speculation, and his close contact 
with nature saved him from the vagaries of a philoso- 
phy which was spun in large measure from the inner 
consciousness. It was Louisa Alcott, who knew 
from domestic experience what she was telling about, 
who defined a philosopher as "a man up in a bal- 
loon, with his family and friends holding the ropes 



262 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

which confine him to earth and trying to haul him 
down." Thoreau, who at least kept his feet fairly 
planted upon mother earth, was at all events not that 
kind of a philosopher. 

Ill 

Thoreau's acquaintance with Emerson began in 
1837. Emerson himself had not settled in Concord 
until 1834, and his attention was first called to the 
young man by a common friend of the two families, 
who noted certain similarities of thought between 
one of Emerson's recent lectures and a passage in 
Thoreau's diary, and spoke of it one day when visit- 
ing the Emerson family. As a result, the young 
man was invited to the house, an occurrence which 
marked the beginning of a friendship which meant 
a great deal to Thoreau, and which was to end only 
with his death, a quarter of a century later. "I 
delight much in my young friend, who seems to 
have as free and erect a mind as any I have ever 
met," wrote Emerson when the acquaintance was 
only a year old. In the spring of 184 1, when school- 
teaching was finally given up, Thoreau was invited 
to become an inmate of the Emerson household, 
and remained a member of the family for the next 
two years. This was a mutually helpful relation on 
the material no less than on the intellectual side. He 
was to have his board and lodging for what work 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 263 

he chose to do, and it is evident from the testimony 
that he gave a full equivalent for what he received. 
"He is a great benefactor and physician to me," wrote 
his host, "for he is an indefatigable and skilful 
laborer. " Emerson's son writes of his services as 
follows: " He was as little troublesome a member of 
the household, with his habits of plain living and 
high thinking, as could well have been, and in the 
constant absences of the master of the house on his 
lecturing trips, the presence there of such a friendly 
and sturdy inmate was a great comfort. He was 
handy with tools, and there was no limit to his 
usefulness and ingenuity about the house and gar- 
den." He looked after the business affairs of the 
family, kept the garden in condition, planted trees, 
and in general filled the place of an older son or a 
younger brother. He also proved helpful in manag- 
ing the affairs of "The Dial," in both an editorial and 
a business capacity. The asperity of his character 
was recognized as inherent, but does not seem to have 
been a cause of irritation. "Thoreau is, with diffi- 
culty, sweet," was Emerson's way of describing it. 
"I grow savager and savager every day, as if fed on 
raw meat," Thoreau wrote in a letter of 1841, but 
this was only his way of expressing the yearning for 
a life closer to nature's heart— the ideal which was 
afterwards realized in the cabin by Walden pond. 
He could write of himself in such terms as these: "I 



264 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

am as unfit for any practical purpose— I mean for 
the furtherance of the world's ends— as gossamer for 
ship-timber; and I, who am going to be a pencil- 
maker tomorrow, can sympathize with God Apollo, 
who served King Admetus for a while on earth."— 
Yet he could spend the day contentedly weeding the 
garden, and the evening romping with the children 
and popping corn. 

It was soon after his entrance into the Emerson 
home that Thoreau lost his brother John, and with 
this death that of Emerson's child Waldo was almost 
coincident. The most fitting commentary upon this 
double bereavement may be supplied by these pass- 
ages from Thoreau's letter to Mrs. Brown, the sister 
of Mrs. Emerson. "Soon after John's death I lis- 
tened to a music-box, and if, at any time, that event 
had seemed inconsistent with the beauty and harmony 
of the universe, it was then gently constrained into 
the placid course of nature by those shady notes, in 
mild and unoffended tone echoing far and wide under 
the heavens. But I find these things more strange 
than sad to me. What right have I to grieve, who 
have not ceased to wonder? . . . Only Nature has 
a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. 
Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along 
the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. 
The same everlasting serenity will appear in the face 
of God, and we will not be sorrowful if he is not. 






HENRY DAVID THOREAU 265 

As for Waldo, he died as the mist rises from the brook, 
which the sun will soon dart his rays through. Do 
not the flowers die every autumn ? He had not even 
taken root here. I was not startled to hear that he 
was dead ; it seemed the most natural event that could 
happen. His fine organization demanded it, and 
nature gently yielded its request. It would have been 
strange if he had lived. Neither will nature manifest 
any sorrow at his death, but soon the note of the lark 
will be heard down in the meadow, and fresh dande- 
lions will spring from the old stocks where he plucked 
them last summer." Sorrow becomes beautiful when 
thus envisaged. The tenderness of such a resignation 
suggests a later poet, who has many times voiced this 
emotion in words of undying beauty. 

"Green earth forgets. 
The gay young generations mask her grief; 
Where bled her children hangs the loaded sheaf." 

It was through "The Dial" that Thoreau made 
his first appearance in print. The poem called 
"Sympathy," already quoted from, and a paper on 
the Satires of Persius, were the earliest of his long 
series of contributions to the pages of that periodical 
during the four years (1840- 1844) of its existence. 
Most of these contributions were transcribed from 
the journal, in which they had already found lodg- 
ment, and most of them were afterwards reprinted in 



266 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the "Week" and the later posthumous volumes. 
For the first two years of "The Dial," Thoreau's 
compositions were not of frequent occurrence. These 
were the years of Margaret Fuller's editorship, and 
she did not always take kindly to his offerings. A 
poem submitted in 1841 elicited from her the follow- 
ing criticism of both the man and the writer. "He is 
healthful, rare, of open eye, ready hand, and noble 
scope. He sets no limit to his life, nor to the invasions 
of nature; he is not wilfully pragmatical, cautious, 
ascetic, or fantastical. But he is as yet a somewhat 
bare hill, which the warm gales of Spring have not 
visited. Thought lies too detached, truth is seen too 
much in detail; we can number and mark the sub- 
stances imbedded in the rock. Thus his verses are 
startling as much as stern ; the thought does not excuse 
its conscious existence by letting us see its relation 
with life; there is a want of fluent music." A prose 
paper submitted a few weeks later was also rejected 
with the following critical remarks: "The essay is 
rich in thoughts, and I should be pained not to meet 
it again. But then, the thoughts seem to me so out 
of their natural order, that I cannot read it through 
without pain. I never once feel myself in a stream of 
thought, but seem to hear the grating of tools in the 
mosaic." These strictures, on the whole, seem to 
have been just; Thoreau was still a tyro at twenty- 
four, and far from his later command of the magic 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 267 

of style. "He says too constantly of nature 'she is 
mine,'" wrote Margaret, and added: "She is not 
yours till you have been more hers." 

After two years, Miss Fuller gave up "The Dial," 
leaving it in Emerson's hands, and he in turn, being 
busied with lecture engagements and other affairs, 
leaned heavily on Thoreau's assistance, so that the 
latter became at times practically the editor. His 
bibliography exhibits five contributions to the first 
two volumes, and no less than twenty-six to the 
other two. This must not, however, be explained 
as a liberal exercise of the editorial prerogative on 
Thoreau's part, because it was Emerson who insisted 
on these frequent appearances, being determined 
that the public (as far as "The Dial" had a public) 
should become acquainted with the remarkable 
qualities of this young writer. A number of these 
contributions were not of Thoreau's own writing, 
but were selections made by him from the "ethnical 
scriptures" of the ancient orient, to which it was the 
particular business of this organ of transcendentalism 
to direct attention. 

Miss Fuller's intellectual characterization of Tho- 
reau, above quoted, may be supplemented by what 
Hawthorne wrote about him at the same period. 
"He is a singular character — a young man with 
much of wild original nature still remaining in him; 
and so far as he is sophisticated, it is in a way and 



2 68 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

method of his own. He is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, 
queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat 
rustic though courteous manners corresponding very 
well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an 
honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much 
better than beauty." We may take the present 
opportunity as well as another to introduce further 
descriptions of the physical Thoreau as he appeared 
to those who know him most intimately. Channing 
thus writes: "In height he was about the average; 
in his build spare, with limbs that were rather longer 
than usual, or of which he made a larger use. His 
features were marked; the nose aquiline or very 
Roman, like one of the portraits of Caesar (more like 
a beak, as was said) ; large overhanging brows above 
the deepest-set blue eyes that could be seen — blue 
in certain lights and in others gray; the forehead not 
unusually broad or high, full of concentrated energy 
and purpose ; the mouth with prominent lips, pursed 
up with meaning and thought when silent, and giv- 
ing out when open a stream of the most varied and 
unusual and instructive sayings. His whole figure 
had an active earnestness, as if he had no moment 
to waste; the clenched hand betokened purpose." 

The following descriptions date from about a 
dozen years later. Daniel Ricketson, a New Bedford 
friend, writes thus: "The most expressive feature 
of his face was his eye, blue in color, and full of the 






HENRY DAVID THOREAU 269 

greatest humanity and intelligence. His head was 
of medium size, the same as that of Emerson, and he 
wore a number seven hat. His arms were rather 
long, his legs, short, and his hands and feet rather 
large. His sloping shoulders were a mark of obser- 
vation." Mr. F. B. Sanborn's description of about 
the same date runs as follows: "He is a little under 
size, with a huge Emersonian nose, bluish gray eyes, 
brown hair, and a ruddy weather-beaten face, which 
reminds me of some shrewd and honest animal's — 
some retired philosophical woodchuck or magnani- 
mous fox. ... He walks about with a brisk, rustic 
air, and never seems tired." These descriptions 
taken together, despite their discrepancy on the sub- 
ject of Thoreau's legs, give a fairly vivid description 
of the man, and make it evident that a profile portrait 
is required to do justice to the rugged strength of 
his features — especially of that nose which all unite 
in magnifying. 

In the summer of 1842, Thoreau and a friend made 
a three days' foray into the heart of nature by an 
excursion to Wachusett, climbing the mountain, and 
camping on its top over night. He describes it as 
"the observatory of the State," from whose summit 
we may see "Massachusetts spread out before us in 
length and breadth like a map." An outing like this 
would be an insignificant incident in an ordinary 
life, but in Thoreau's case it bore literary fruit in 



270 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the shape of " A Walk to Wachusett," one of the most 
interesting of the papers of his formative period. 
Probably a brief essay is all that a three days' excur- 
sion is worth, but we remember that the week on the 
Concord and Merrimack produced a whole volume; 
not, however, without the intrusion of much matter 
alien to the special subject — unless we frankly admit 
that subject to have been Thoreau's mind, and not 
the geography of a New England river and its trib- 
utary. 

In the spring of 1843, Thoreau left the Emerson 
household for New York, whither William Emerson 
had invited him to come as a tutor for his boy in his 
Staten Island home. A short time before leaving 
Concord, he took advantage of his host's absence on 
a lecture-trip to write him in grateful acknowledg- 
ment of his hospitality. "I have been your pensioner 
for nearly two years, and still left free as under the 
sky. It has been as free a gift as the sun or the 
summer, though I have sometimes molested you 
with my mean acceptance of it, — I who have failed 
to render even those slight services of the hand which 
would have been for a sign at least: and, by the 
fault of my nature, have failed of many better and 
higher services. But I will not trouble you with this, 
but for once thank you as well as Heaven." This 
view of the relation is altogether too self-deprecatory, 
as has before been urged; it could not be taken as a 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 271 

fair statement of Thoreau's position in the Emerson 
home without many qualifications. He could hardly 
be described as a pensioner of whom Channing's 
words were true: "He was one of those characters 
who may be called household treasures; always on 
the spot with skillful eye and hand, to raise the best 
melons, plant the choicest trees, and act as extempore 
mechanic; fond of the pets, — his sister's flowers or 
sacred tabby — kittens being his favorites, — he would 
play with them by the half hour." 

The Staten Island sojourn lasted until the autumn 
of 1843. Thoreau's tutorial duties were not irksome, 
and he had much time for exploration and for the 
cultivation of new acquaintances. One of his aims 
was the establishment of some relation with editors 
or publishers that should provide him with remuner- 
ative literary work. Thus far his writing had gone 
unrewarded, save by such fame as "The Dial" could 
bestow. He had come no nearer to actual pay for 
his work than a promise made him by the "Boston 
Miscellany" for his Wachusett paper. The hope of 
this payment was fondly cherished for a year or so, 
but all that it ever came to was the offer of a certain 
number of free copies of the periodical. His New 
York experiment brought no returns. He wrote in 
August: "I have tried sundry methods of earning 
money in the city, of late, but without success: have 
rambled into every bookseller's or publisher's house, 



272 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

and discussed their affairs with them. Some propose 
to me to do what an honest man cannot. Among 
others I conversed with the Harpers — to see if they 
might not find me useful to them; but they say that 
they are making fifty thousand dollars annually, and 
their motto is to let well alone." A month later he 
wrote: "As for Eldorado, that is far off yet. My 
bait will not tempt the rats — they are too well fed. 
The ' Democratic Review' is poor, and can only 
afford half or quarter pay, which it will do ; and they 
say there is a ' Lady's Companion' that pays, — but 
I could not write anything companionable." The 
"Democratic Review" actually accepted two of his 
offerings, and, we presume, gave him "half or quarter 
pay" for them. 

In other ways, he found his brief stay in New York 
and vicinity both profitable and interesting. He did 
not explore the city as much as he would have liked 
to, because even omnibus-fare was a serious consid- 
eration, and there are limits to what a man can do 
with his legs alone. But he read diligently at the 
libraries, and made the acquaintance of a number of 
interesting people. Among them were Horace Gree- 
ley, then only on the threshold of his editorial fame; 
Henry James, "a refreshing, forward-looking, and 
forward-moving man," who made "humanity seem 
more erect and respectable;" Albert Brisbane, who 
looked "like a man who has lived in a cellar, far gone 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 273 

in consumption;" and W. H. Channing, nephew of 
the great theologian, "a concave man," whom you 
may see to be " retreating from himself and from 
yourself, with sad doubts." Thus Thoreau came in 
contact with likable individuals, but of mankind 
in the aggregate, as he saw it in his new field of ob- 
servation, he had a poor opinion. " Seeing so many 
people from day to day, one comes to have less re- 
spect for flesh and bones, and thinks they must be 
more loosely- jointed, of less firm fibre, than the few 
he had known. It must have a very bad influence on 
children to see so many human beings at once, — mere 
herds of men." 

This was Thoreau's first real acquaintance with 
the world of men, for Boston was by comparison with 
New York a rather sleepy community. In one of his 
letters to Emerson, he expresses his feelings with 
considerable energy, presumably also relieving them 
at the same time. "I don't like the city better, the 
more I see it, but worse. It is a thousand times 
meaner then I could have imagined. It will be some- 
thing to hate, — that's the advantage it will be to me ; 
and even the best people in it are a part of it, and 
talk coolly about it. The pigs in the street are the 
most respectable part of the population. When will 
the world learn that a million men are of no impor- 
tance compared with one man?" Emerson must 
have thought, when he read this petulant outburst, 



274 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

that his young friend was by way of developing into 
another Carlyle. The young man probably spent 
more time rambling around Staten Island than pac- 
ing the streets of the city, thus rinding a satisfaction 
that the sight of men could not afford him. The 
bounty of nature made up for the meanness of hu- 
mankind. "I have just come from the beach," he 
wrote one day to his mentor, "and I like it much. 
Everything there is on a grand and generous scale, — 
sea- weed, water, and sand; and even the dead fishes, 
horses, and hogs have a rank, luxuriant odor; great 
shad-nets spread to dry; crabs and horse-shoes crawl- 
ing over the sand; clumsy boats, only for service, 
dancing like sea-fowl over the surf, and ships afar 
off going about their business." With such simple 
distractions as these, and with certain shapings of 
iEschylus and Pindar into English, he filled his 
leisure hours, and returned to Concord in the au- 
tumn not altogether discontented with his summer's 
outing. 

He now took up his father's business of pencil 
making, and for a time supported himself in that 
way. He became an expert in the manufacture, and 
in one (later) year speaks of having made a thousand 
dollars' worth of pencils. No such amount as this, 
however, was needed to supply his simple wants. 
He recognized as an imperative requirement that 
every individual should earn a living by his own 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 275 

efforts, and that it was important for a man to know 
"what proportion of his daily bread he earns by day 
labor or job work with his pen, what he inherits, 
what steals." But he was not of those who are in 
danger propter vitam vivendi perdere causas, and his 
minimum of necessity was fixed at a very low amount. 
He says in "Walden": "For more than five years 
I maintained myself solely by the labor of my hands, 
and I found that, by working about six weeks in a 
year, I could meet all the expenses of living; the 
whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, 
I had free and clear for study. I found that the oc- 
cupation of day-laborer was the most independent 
of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty 
days in the year to support me." Some idea of the 
variety of things he could do, and did, upon occa- 
sion, may be gained from a letter written to the sec- 
retary of his Harvard class in 1847, ten years after 
its graduation. "Am not married. I don't know 
whether mine is a profession, or a trade, or what not. 
It is not yet learned, and in every instance has been 
practiced before being studied. The mercantile part 
of it was begun by myself alone. It is not one but 
legion. I will give you some of the monster's heads. 
I am a Schoolmaster, a private Tutor, a Surveyor, a 
Gardener, a Farmer, a Painter (I mean a House 
Painter), a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day-laborer, a 
Pencil-maker, a Glass-paper-maker, a Writer, and 



276 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

sometimes a Poetaster. If you will act the part of 
Iolus, and apply a hot iron to any of these heads, 
I shall be greatly obliged to you. My present em- 
ployment is to answer such orders as may be ex- 
pected from so general an advertisement as the 
above. That is, if I see fit, which is not always the 
case, for I have found out a way to live without what 
is commonly called employment or industry, attract- 
ive or otherwise. Indeed, my steadiest employment, 
if such it can be called, is to keep myself at the top 
of my condition, and ready for whatever may turn 
up in heaven or on earth. The last two or three 
years I lived in Concord woods, alone, something 
more than a mile from any neighbor, in a house 
built entirely by myself. 

"P. S. I beg that the class will not consider me 
an object of charity, and if any of them are in want 
of any pecuniary assistance and will make known 
their case to me, I will engage to give them some ad- 
vice of more worth than money.' ' 



IV 



When in this letter Thoreau speaks of having 
found a way to live without industry, he is, of course, 
alluding to his Walden cabin, and the letter itself 
dates from the close of his two years' experience as 
an amateur hermit. "How much sincere life befon 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 277 

we can even utter one sincere word," he had written 
just before going to Staten Island. The sort of sin- 
cere life that Thoreau's nature needed was not to be 
found in constant intercourse with men; it must be 
sought in the solitude of nature, with little other 
companionship than that of his own thoughts. The 
idea that life might profitably be much simplified, 
and brought into closer consonance with natural 
law, was common to all the members of the tran- 
scendentalist group, although the favorite method of 
" return to nature" was not the same in all cases. 
The Brook Farmers (1841-1847) and the settlers 
in Alcott's Fruitlands colony (1843), as well as the 
later Phalansteries in which such men as W. H. 
Channing and Horace Greeley sought to realize 
Fourier's social teachings, found no more sympathy 
with Thoreau than they did with Emerson; for these 
men salvation was not to be got by community liv- 
ing with its necessary limitations upon individualism. 
Thoreau's opinion of these experiments is forcibly 
expressed in his journal: "As for these communities, 
I think I had rather keep bachelor's hall in hell than 
go to board in heaven." He was determined to be- 
come the captain of his soul far more absolutely 
than was possible under Brook Farm conditions. 

One day toward the end of March, 1845, Tho- 
reau borrowed Alcott's ax, put it over his shoulder, 
and walked southward from Concord to Walden 



278 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Pond, about a mile and a half distant from the 
center of the town. The ax was dull, being the 
property of a philosopher, and the borrower, being a 
practical man, sharpened it for use. He then began 
to fell the trees that were needed for his purpose, 
and thus began the construction of the cabin which 
was to be his home for the next two years. He was 
a squatter on land belonging to Emerson, and his 
final choice of a retreat was made after one or two 
tentative glances in other directions. The idea of 
taking up the solitary life for a season had been in 
his mind for several years. As early as 1841, he 
wrote of it in his journal, and talked about it with 
Margaret Fuller. The spot chosen for the experi- 
ment was one to which many associations, both per- 
sonal and legendary, were attached. It had been a 
favorite haunt of his boyhood, when his brother was 
the blithe companion of his rambles, and was well 
provided with romantic traditions of Indians, witches, 
and outlaws. 

During the months of May and June, Thoreau 
toiled away at the task of shaping his timbers and 
digging his cellar. He got the necessary planks by 
dismantling a shanty which he bought from an Irish- 
man, and finally the frame of the house was completed. 
Then came the raising, in which he had the help of 
his friends, among them Alcott and G. W. Curtis, 
the latter then a farmer's apprentice. We read in 






HENRY DAVID THOREAU 279 

"Walden": "No man was ever more honored in the 
character of his raisers than I. They are destined, 
I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures 
one day." When the cabin was up, it covered ten 
by fifteen feet of ground, and had a closet, a garret, 
a window, two doors, and a fireplace. When autumn 
came, a chimney was built, and the walls were 
plastered. The only expenditure Thoreau had to 
make was for material, and $28.12^ was the entire 
money cost of his home. He took full possession on 
the Fourth of July, and one may find a sort of sig- 
nificance in the fact that Independence Day was the 
day upon which he thus asserted his individual inde- 
pendence of society. 

He writes very fully in "Walden" of the reasons 
which impelled him to this experiment. "I went 
to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, 
to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I 
could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when 
I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did 
not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; 
nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was 
quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out 
all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- 
like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a 
broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a 
corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it 
proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and 



2 8o LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness 
to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by 
experience, and be able to give a true account of it in 
my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, 
are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is 
of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily 
concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 
1 glorify God and enjoy him forever.'" The writer 
of this surely ranges himself with the prophets — 
with Ruskin and Emerson and Carlyle; in the very 
essence of the matter with Goethe, the clearest- 
sighted of all modern men. 

Thoreau at Walden Pond was not so much of a 
hermit as the public often thinks him to have been. 
He puts the case succinctly when he says that he went 
to the woods to " transact some private business." 
Channing speaks of the retreat as a " writing-case" 
and as a " wooden inkstand," adding that "he biv- 
ouacked there and really lived at home, where he 
went every day." While this is not literally true, 
there is no doubt that he remained in constant inter- 
course with his family and friends. He often went in 
to take supper and spend the evening with them, and 
they in turn came frequently to the cabin, bringing 
welcome delicacies. Channing stayed with him on 
one occasion for two weeks, and made many briefer 
visits. There were also many other visitors, and he 
says that at one time he had "twenty-five or thirty 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 281 

souls, with their bodies" as his guests. Some of the 
visitors were mere curiosity-seekers, and others were 
"self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all"; 
these he did not suffer gladly, and he tried to let them 
"know when their visit had terminated" by quietly 
taking up his tasks, and answering their questions 
" from greater and greater remoteness." As a matter 
of fact, he protested against being stamped as a 
recluse, and said: "I naturally am no hermit, but 
might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the 
bar-room, if my business called me thither." 

He provided for his small expenses by doing an 
occasional job of surveying for the neighboring farm- 
ers, by working at some of his various trades in the 
village, and by the sale of his produce. The latter 
item in his budget was not considerable; the net 
profit from his first summer amounting to eight 
dollars. He earned this by the cultivation of two and 
a half acres; the second season he cultivated only a 
third of an acre, but more intensively, and did a little 
better. Beans were his chief reliance, both as a crop 
and as a food, and at one time he had seven miles of 
them, reckoning by the rows of poles. He worked in 
the field during the season from five o'clock until 
noon, besides doing his house-cleaning and getting 
his breakfast. In the afternoon he felt free to roam 
about the woods, to fish in the pond, or to visit the 
village. In the evening, he liked to lie in his boat, 



282 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

11 playing the flute, and watching the perch, which I 
seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and 
the moon traveling over the ribbed bottom, which 
was strewed with the wrecks of the forest.' ' At one 
time, he was commissioned by Agassiz to collect 
natural history specimens, mainly fishes, and send 
them to Cambridge. When winter came, he read 
industriously, wrote in his journal, and put the 
"Week" into shape for publication. It was on the 
whole a happy time of self-examination and self- 
development, while of the scene we may say in 
Channing's words : 

"More fitting place I cannot fancy now 
For such a man to let the line run off 
The mortal reel, such patience hath the lake, 
Such gratitude and cheer are in the pines." 

The Mexican War was going on during the latter 
part of Thoreau's " Walden " period, and intensified 
his feelings on the subject of slavery. Fugitive 
negroes occasionally found their way to safety by 
passing through the State of Massachusetts, and one 
such fugitive, whom he helped "to forward toward 
the North Star," is mentioned by Thoreau. Probably 
this was the negro thus referred to (February, 1847), 
in Alcott's diary: "Our friend the fugitive, who has 
shared now a week's hospitalities with us (sawing and 
piling my wood), feels this new trust of Freedom yet 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 283 

unsafe here in New England, and so has left us this 
morning for Canada. We supplied him with the 
means of journeying, and bade him Godspeed to a 
freer land. His stay with us has given image and a 
name to the dire entity of slavery." Upon the 
strength of such evidence as this, Thoreau's cabin 
has sometimes been spoken of as a station of the 
Underground Railroad, but it was not that in any 
definite sense. Comparatively few fugitives took the 
New England route, in any case, and those who 
found their way to Concord were cared for in " spe- 
cially prepared houses" that were much safer hiding- 
places than Thoreau's lodge would have been. This 
is the testimony of Dr. S. A. Jones, who has made 
a special investigation of the subject. 

There is no doubt, however, that Thoreau would 
have done his part, if called upon, to aid any fugitive 
slaves that might have come his way. How strongly 
he felt upon the subject is best illustrated by his 
refusal to pay the poll-tax, a refusal which lodged 
him in jail for a night. This is one of the most 
generally familiar of the incidents in his life, but is 
not clearly understood. He had anarchistic pre- 
dispositions, but had no intention of repudiating 
the implied contract which each individual makes 
with the society in which he grows up. Several years 
earlier, he had refused to pay a church-tax, because 
he did not think its specific purpose a legitimate rea- 



284 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

son for taxation. So in 1845, when it was evident 
that the nation was about to plunge into a wicked 
war for the acquisition of new slave territory, and 
when another son of his native state could exclaim: 

"Massachusetts, God forgive her, 
She's akneelin' with the rest," 

Thoreau thought he would make his small individual 
protest. He did not want his dollar to "buy a man, 
or a musket to shoot one with." "I meet this 
American government," he said, "or its represent- 
ative the State government, directly, and face to face, 
once a year — no more — in the person of its tax- 
gatherer. ... If a thousand men were not to pay 
their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent 
and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and 
enable the State to commit violence and shed inno- 
cent blood." This explanation gives point to the 
bit of dialogue reported between Thoreau and Em- 
erson when the latter came to see him in the town 
jail. "Henry, why are you here?" was the visitor's 
query. "Why are you not here ? " was the neat reply. 
The story has other humorous aspects. The per- 
plexed tax-gatherer asked what he ought to do under 
the circumstances, and Thoreau suggested that he 
resign his office. The prisoner afterwards described 
his night in jail with a fine sense of detachment. "It 
was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 285 

inside of it. I had never seen its institutions before. 
I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were 
about." The next morning Aunt Maria brought 
the tax to the place of durance, and the prisoner was 
released, "mad as the devil," according to the 
jailer's testimony. The afternoon of that day found 
him huckleberrying on a hill two miles from Concord, 
a spot from which, as he said, " the State was nowhere 
to be seen." 



In the fall of 1847, Thoreau emerged from his 
Walden retirement, a man of thirty, a well-developed 
character, a deep student of literature and a deeper 
student of the book of nature, and a master of prose 
style. His own words were: "I left the woods for 
as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps, it seemed 
to me that I had several lives to live, and could not 
spare any more time for that one." Thoreau again 
went to the Emerson house to live, and made him- 
self more useful to the family than ever, for its head 
was away on his second European trip, which lasted 
from October, 1847, to July, 1848. How well the 
visitor fitted into the household may be seen from 
this charming bit from one of his letters to the absent 
friend. 

"Lidian [Mrs. Emerson] and I make very good 
housekeepers. She is a very dear sister to me. 



286 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Ellen and Edith and Eddy and Aunty Brown keep 
up the tragedy and comedy and tragic-comedy of 
life as usual. The two former have not forgotten 
their old acquaintance; even Edith carries a young 
memory in her head, I find. Eddy can teach us all 
how to pronounce. If you should discover any rare 
hoard of wooden or pewter horses, I have no doubt 
he will know how to appreciate it. He occasionally 
surveys mankind from my shoulders as wisely as 
ever Johnson did. I respect him not a little, though 
it is I that lift him up so unceremoniously. And 
sometimes I have to set him down in a hurry, accord- 
ing to his 'mere will and good pleasure.' He very 
seriously asked me, the other day, 'Mr. Thoreau, 
will you be my father?' I am occasionally Mr. 
Rough-and-trouble with him that I may not miss 
him, and lest he should miss you too much. So you 
must come back soon, or you will be superseded." 
The letter from which the above passage is taken 
contains also a veiled allusion to a love affair, if that 
name may be given to an episode in which Thoreau's 
only part was an energetic disclaimer of the tender 
passion. "I have had a tragic correspondence, for 

the most part all on one side, with Miss . 

She did really wish to — I hesitate to write — marry 
me. That is the way they spell it. Of course I did 
not write a deliberate answer. How could I delib- 
erate upon it ? I sent back as distinct a no as I have 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 287 

learned to pronounce after considerable practice, and 
I trust that this no has succeeded. Indeed, I wished 
that it might burst, like hollow shot, after it had 
struck and buried itself and made itself felt there. 
There was no other way, I really had anticipated no 
such foe as this in my career." Thoreau's biog- 
raphers fail to enlighten us concerning this assault 
upon the citadel of his independence, but the passage 
throws an instructive light upon his character, and 
for that reason seems worth quoting. 

After Emerson's return in the summer of 1848, 
Thoreau went back to his father's house, and re- 
mained under the family roof for the rest of his life, 
except, of course, when away upon his excursions. 
The pursuit of literature now began to provide him 
with a small part, at least, of the small means needed 
for his support, although for years afterward he had 
to resort at times to his old trades of pencil-making 
and surveying. It was through Horace Greeley's 
friendly offices — a Horace turned Maecenas, as Mr. 
Sanborn puts it — that an essay on Carlyle was placed 
in "Graham's Magazine," and a paper on "Ktaadn 
and the Maine Woods" in Sartain's " Union Maga- 
zine." These appeared in 1847 and 1848, respec- 
tively, and the two brought him, eventually, after 
Greeley had sufficiently dunned the publishers, the 
sum of one hundred and twenty-five dollars. An 
essay on " Resistance to Civil Government," which 



288 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

appeared in the "^Esthetic Papers" (Boston, 1849), 
does not seem to have brought any return. Writ- 
ing to Greeley in 1848, in grateful acknowledg- 
ment of his efforts, Thoreau gives this account 
of himself: "It is five years that I have been 
maintaining myself entirely by manual labor, — not 
getting a cent from any other quarter or employ- 
ment. Now this toil has occupied so few days — 
perhaps a single month, spring and fall each — that 
I must have had more leisure than any of my brethren 
for study and literature. I have done rude work of 
all kinds. From July, 1845, to September, 1847, I 
lived by myself in the forest, in a fairly good cabin, 
plastered and warmly covered, which I built myself. 
There I earned all I needed and kept to my own 
affairs. During that time my weekly outlay was 
but seven-and-twenty cents, and I had an abundance 
of all sorts. Unless the human race perspire more 
than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of 
their brow." 

A postscript to the above letter says: "My book 
grows in bulk as I work on it." The book was "A 
Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," long 
planned, and now nearly ready for publication. 
The publishers fought shy of so nondescript a work, 
and were willing to print it only at the author's ex- 
pense. It was upon this basis that an edition of a 
thousand copies was made, in 1849, by a Boston 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 289 

bookseller. Habent sua fata libelli. The fate of 
this one was to collect dust upon the shelves, save 
for some three hundred copies sold or given out for 
review, until 1853, when the seven hundred remain- 
ing copies, bound and unbound, were unloaded upon 
their imperturbable author, who thus commented 
upon the incident: "The wares are sent me at last, 
and I have an opportunity to examine my purchase. 
They are something more substantial than fame, as 
my back knows, which has borne them up two 
flights of stairs to a place similar to that to which 
they trace their origin. ... I have now a library 
of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred 
of which I wrote myself. Is it not well that the au- 
thor should behold the fruits of his labor? My 
works are piled up in my chamber, half as high as 
my head, my opera omnia. This is authorship. 
These are the work of my brain. There was just one 
piece of good luck in the venture. The unbound 
were tied up by the printer four years ago in stout 
paper wrappers, and inscribed 'H. D. Thoreau's 
Concord River, fifty copies.' So Munroe had only 
to cross out ' River' and write 'Mass.,' and deliver 
them to the express-man at once. I can see now 
what I write for, and the result of my labors. Never- 
theless, in spite of this result, sitting beside the inert 
mass of my works, I take up my pen to-night, to 
record what thought or experience I may have had, 



290 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

with as much satisfaction as ever." The book to 
which the public then gave little heed is not Thoreau's 
best, by any means, and its incoherency was against 
it. Far from being a straightforward account of the 
voyage which it pretended to describe, it was a re- 
ceptacle into which the writer had pitchforked, with- 
out much thought of arrangement, his poems and 
papers that had appeared in "The Dial," together 
with passages from his journal, and brief discourses 
upon such special subjects as friendship and religion. 
A year before the publication of the "Week," 
Thoreau had made the acquaintance of Harrison 
Blake of Worcester, who became one of his closest 
intellectual intimates, through a lengthy corre- 
spondence and much mutual visiting. After Tho- 
reau's death, it was Blake who acted as his literary 
executor, and brought together the contents of his 
several posthumous volumes. The relation between 
the two men was curiously impersonal, and the 
biographer looks in vain to their correspondence for 
material facts. Many of Thoreau's longest letters 
were written to Blake, but they deal mostly in ab- 
stractions. Alcott speaks of Blake's love for Thoreau 
as partaking of "the exceeding tenderness of woman," 
and describes it as "a pure Platonism to the fineness 
and delicacy of the devotee's sensibility." This 
seems to be an "Orphic saying," but the underlying 
meaning is plain enough. Soon after he had thus 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 291 

gained a lifelong friend, Thoreau lost his sister 
Helen, who died in 1849. The year following was 
the date of the tragic death of Margaret Fuller, re- 
turning from Italy with her husband, the Marquis 
of Ossoli, and their child, and shipwrecked off Fire 
Island. Thoreau was one of the friends who hastened 
to the spot to recover the remains and do what else 
might yet be done in the way of service to friends and 
relatives. The philosophy which had helped to con- 
sole him at the time of his brother's death was again 
helpful. He writes to Blake: "I have in my pocket 
a button which I ripped off the coat of the Marquis 
of Ossoli, on the seashore, the other day. Held up, 
it intercepts the light,— an actual button,— and yet 
all the life it is connected with is less substantial to 
me, and interests me less, than my faintest dream. 
Our thoughts are the epochs in our lives: all else is 
but as a journal of the winds that blew while we were 
here." 

It was in the fall of 1849 that Thoreau, with a com- 
panion, took the first of the Cape Cod tramps that 
were to provide material for several magazine articles, 
and finally for one of his posthumous books. On 
this and other similar journeyings, his equipment was 
of the simplest. "The cheapest way to travel," he 
said, "is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spoon, and 
a fish-line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some 
sugar. When you come to a brook or pond, you can 



292 



LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 



catch fish and cook them; or you can boil a hasty- 
pudding; or you can buy a loaf of bread at a farmer's 
house for fourpence, moisten it in the next brook 
that crosses the road, and dip it into your sugar— 
this alone will last you a whole day." He wore com- 
fortable old clothes, and was an adept at camping 
out. He was fond of strong tea, which he made in 
his tin dipper, and liked to take along a thick slice 
of plum cake to eat with it. His luggage, thus re- 
duced to its lowest terms, was tied up in a handker- 
chief or a piece of brown paper, and he was inde- 
pendent of both inns and railroads. If he did not 
care to spend the night out of doors, a farmhouse or 
fisherman's cabin was usually available. On these 
expeditions, he was generally taken for an itinerant 
peddler or tinker, and was now and then offered em- 
ployment by some farmer whose hands were more 
than full. All unknown to themselves at the time, 
Thoreau and his companion were the recipients of 
police attentions during this first Cape Cod journey. 
The Provincetown bank had just been robbed, and 
the two tramps, naturally regarded as suspicious 
characters, were tracked the whole length of the 
Cape by the officers of the law. 

A year later, in September, 1850, Thoreau and 
Channing spent a week in Canada, visiting Montreal 
and Quebec, and getting some glimpses of the sur- 
rounding country. "Sights" in the ordinary sense 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 293 

did not greatly appeal to the man who had said 
that the sight of a marsh-hawk in the Concord 
meadows was of more interest to him than the entry 
of the allies into Paris. Nevertheless, he was not a 
little impressed by the immense Church of Notre 
Dame, and probably a few days in some old world 
capital would have dissipated in considerable de- 
gree his prejudice against the works of man. The 
Canadians seemed to him "to be suffering between 
two fires— the soldiery and the priesthood." When 
he afterwards sought to make "copy" out of the 
expedition he found it difficult. "I fear that I have 
not got much to say about Canada, not having seen 
much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold." 
Both the Cape Cod and the Canadian journeys took 
literary shape in papers that appeared in "Putnam's 
Monthly Magazine," then just started. But Tho- 
reau was an uncompromising contributor, and a dif- 
ference of opinion with the editor caused him to 
withdraw the papers before they had been pub- 
lished in full. Speaking of the "Canada story" in 
a letter of 1853 ne sa y s: "It concerns me but little, 
and probably is not worth the time it took to tell it. 
Yet I had absolutely no design whatever in my 
mind, but simply to report what I saw. I have in- 
serted all of myself that was implicated, or made the 
excursion. It has come to an end, at any rate; they 
will print no more, but return me my MS. when it is 



294 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

but little more than half done, as well as another I 
had sent them, because the editor requires the lib- 
erty to omit the heresies without consulting me, — a 
privilege California is not rich enough to bid for." 

Thoreau's first excursion into the forests of Maine 
has already been mentioned. Two others were under- 
taken, in 1853 and 1857, respectively, and what he 
wrote concerning all three was put together into the 
posthumous volume entitled "The Maine Woods." 
A paper called " Chesuncook," resulting from the 
second of these excursions, was given to "The Atlan- 
tic Monthly" in 1858, and was the first of his several 
contributions to that magazine. It was chiefly a 
study of the moose, its natural history and habits, 
and the methods by which man pursued it to its 
destruction. The third excursion took him far into 
the wilderness and included over three hundred 
miles of canoeing. As an example of the reflections 
inspired by these Maine journeyings we may quote 
the following passage: "I am reminded by my jour- 
ney how exceedingly new this country still is. You 
have only to travel for a few days into the interior 
and back parts even of many of the old States to come 
to that very America which the Northmen, and Cabot, 
and Gosnold, and Smith, and Raleigh visited. If 
Columbus was the first to discover the islands, 
Americus Vespucius and Cabot and the Puritans, and 
we their descendants, have discovered only the shores 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 295 

of America. While the republic has acquired a 
history world-wide, America is still unsettled and 
unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we 
live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and 
hardly know where the rivers come from which float 
our navy." 

In the summer of 1854, "Walden" appeared. 
The fortunes of this book, the second of the only two 
which Thoreau published, were in marked contrast 
to those of the "Week." The earlier book had left 
him saddled with a debt which it required several 
years for him to work off; the later book took care of 
itself financially, and had a reasonable success from 
the publisher's point of view. It attracted an un- 
expected amount of attention, was favorably noticed 
in many quarters, and so enhanced the author's 
reputation that his services as a lecturer grew to be 
in frequent demand, and came near to emancipating 
him from the drudgery of manual labor. Soon after 
the book was published Emerson wrote to a friend: 
"All American kind are delighted with ' Walden' 
as far as they have dared to say. The little pond 
sinks in these days as tremulous at its human fame. 
I do not know if the book has come to you yet, but 
it is cheerful, sparkling, readable, with all kinds of 
merits, and rising sometimes to very great heights. 
We count Henry the undoubted king of all American 
lions." An illustrative quotation may be given for 



296 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the purpose of setting forth Thoreau's philosophy 
of the simple life as excogitated during his hermit 
years. "Still we live meanly, like ants; though the 
fable tells us that we were long ago changed into 
men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error 
upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best 
virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable 
wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. 
An honest man has hardly need to count more than 
his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his 
ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, 
simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, 
and not a hundred or a thousand ; instead of a million 
count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your 
thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of 
civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and 
quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be 
allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not 
founder and go to the bottom and not make his 
port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a 
great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, 
simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be neces- 
sary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; 
and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is 
like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, 
with its boundary for ever fluctuating, so that even a 
German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any 
moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 297 

internal improvements, which, by the way, are all 
external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy 
and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furni- 
ture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury 
and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a 
worthy aim, as the million households in the land; 
and the only cure for it as for them is in a rigid econ- 
omy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of 
life and elevation of purpose." The success of 
"Walden" has been more than confirmed by the 
judgment of a later generation. It has been accepted 
as an American classic in the most typical sense, 
and stands out among the many volumes that now 
bear Thoreau's name as the best of them all. 

The publication of " Walden" brought Thoreau 
a number of new friends. One of these was Mr. 
Daniel Ricketson, a Quaker of New Bedford, who 
bought a copy of the book, discovered in its author a 
congenial spirit, and straightway entered into corre- 
spondence with him. The exchange of letters was 
soon followed by an exchange of visits, and the two 
men remained intimate for the rest of Thoreau's 
life. The same year brought a visit from an English- 
man — the only one with whom Thoreau ever had 
close acquaintance, although he had met Clough a 
couple of years earlier — one Thomas Cholmondeley, 
a nephew of Bishop Heber. He had been a pupil of 
Clough, who furnished him with letters to Emerson. 



298 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

On his first visit to Concord, he appeared with the 
usual equipment of the traveling Englishman, includ- 
ing a valet — a strange phenomenon in that simple 
community. On his second visit four years later he 
was a less burdened traveler, having evidently taken 
to heart the philosophy of his American friends. 
The acquaintance thus made was continued by 
correspondence until Thoreau's death. It was early 
in 1855 that Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, who was to 
become Thoreau's biographer, came to Concord to 
live. He was just completing his course at Harvard, 
and had already been in correspondence with the 
author of "Walden." The acquaintance soon 
ripened into friendship, "and for two years or more 
I dined with him almost daily, and often joined in 
his walks and river voyages, or swam with him 
in some of our numerous Concord rivers." The 
following note was made early in the acquaintance. 
"Thoreau looks eminently sagacious — like a sort of 
wise, wild beast. He dresses plainly, wears a beard 
in his throat, and has a brown complexion." This 
note is our first introduction to the bearded Thoreau 
of the later portraits; in a portrait of only the year 
before he appears with a smooth face. 

Early in 1856, Horace Greeley, who had actively 
befriended Thoreau for a number of years, proposed 
that he should come to the Chappaqua farm, thirty- 
six miles from New York, and act as tutor to the 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 299 

editor's children. This offer was entertained, but 
eventually rejected. It led, however, to a visit to 
the farm later in the same year, when Thoreau was 
spending a short time in New York and vicinity. 
The occasion of this journey was an invitation to 
visit the Eagleswood community near Perth Amboy, 
New Jersey, for the double purpose of lecturing to 
them and surveying the tract of land upon which 
they had settled. This community, which numbered 
among its members the Grimke sisters, Theodore 
Weld, James G. Birney (who had been the presi- 
dential candidate of the Liberty Party in 1840), and 
other pioneer abolitionists, is the subject of an amus- 
ing letter to Sophia Thoreau, from which these ex- 
tracts may be made. " Sunday forenoon I attended a 
sort of Quaker meeting . . . where it was expected 
that the Spirit would move me (I having been previ- 
ously spoken to about it) ; and it, or something else, 
did — an inch or so. I said just enough to set them a 
little by the ears and make it lively. . . . There sat 
Mrs. Weld [Grimke] and her sister, two elderly gray- 
headed ladies, the former in extreme Bloomer cos- 
tume which was what you may call remarkable ; Mr. 
Arnold Buffum, with broad face and a great white 
beard, looking like a pier-head made of the cork-tree 
with the bark on, as if he could buffet a considerable 
wave; James G. Birney, formerly candidate for the 
presidency, with another particularly white head and 



300 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

beard; Edward Palmer, the anti-money man (for 
whom communities were made), with his ample 
beard somewhat grayish. Some of them, I suspect, 
are very worthy people. . . . They all know more 
about your neighbors and acquaintances than you 
suspected." If anyone should cast doubts upon 
Thoreau's possession of a sense of humor, this letter 
ought to prove convincing. 

It was only a few days after the letter was written 
that Thoreau, in company with Alcott, went to 
Brooklyn to call on Walt Whitman. The first 
" Leaves of Grass" was then only a year old, and few 
people had discovered it. Even as late as the year 
of Thoreau's death (1862), Emerson could speak 
in his funeral eulogy of the three men who had "of 
late years strongly impressed Mr. Thoreau," and, 
after naming John Brown, and his Indian guide in 
Maine, Joe Polis, could refer to Whitman as "a third 
person, not known to this audience." But there was 
no uncertainty in Thoreau's judgment of the man, 
as there had been no uncertainty the year before in 
Emerson's judgment of the work. When fresh from 
his impression of the meeting he wrote of Whitman: 
"He is apparently the greatest democrat the world 
has seen. Kings and aristocracy go by the board at 
once, as they have long deserved to. A remarkably 
strong though coarse nature, of a sweet disposition, 
and much prized by his friends." Two or three 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 301 

weeks later, he wrote again: "I have just read his 
second edition (which he gave me), and it has done 
me more good than any reading for a long time. . . . 
I have found his poems exhilarating, encouraging. 
As for his sensuality, — and it may turn out to be 
less sensual than it appears, — I do not so much wish 
that those parts were not written, as that men and 
women were so pure that they could read them with- 
out harm, that is, without understanding them. One 
woman told me that no woman could read it, — as if 
a man could read what a woman could not. . . . 
We ought to rejoice greatly in him. He occasionally 
suggests something a little more than human. You 
can't confound him with the other inhabitants of 
Brooklyn or New York. How they must shudder 
when they read him! . . . Since I have seen him, 
I find that I am not disturbed by any brag or egoism 
in his book. He may turn out the least of a braggart 
of all, having a better right to be confident." One of 
the books sent by Thoreau in 1857 to his English 
friend was the "Leaves of Grass" — perhaps the 
first copy of Whitman to be read in England. When 
Cholmondeley attempted to read it to his stepfather, 
the Rev. Z. Macaulay, "that clergyman declared 
he would not hear it, and threatened to throw it in 
the fire." Cholmondeley himself wrote: "Is there 
actually such a man as Whitman ? Has anyone seen 
or handled him ? His is a tongue ' not understanded ' 



302 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

of the English people. I find the gentleman altogether 
left out of the book. It is the first book I have ever 
seen which I should call a 'new book.' " 



VI 

Mention has already been made of Thoreau's 
occasional friendly interest in the fugitive slaves 
that made their pilgrimage toward freedom by way 
of Concord. He was an avowed abolitionist, and he 
shared in the indignation with which Massachusetts 
resented, in 1854, the delivery of Anthony Burns into 
the hands of the slave-hunters. What he thought 
about this episode was forcibly expressed in his 
address on " Slavery in Massachusetts," delivered 
at Framingham on the occasion made memorable 
by Garrison's public burning of the Constitution of 
the United States. "I feel that my investment in 
life here is worth many per cent less since Massa- 
chusetts last deliberately sent back an innocent man, 
Anthony Burns, to slavery." The essay on " Resist- 
ance to Civil Government," and the incident of his 
brief tenancy of the Concord jail, afford other and 
earlier illustrations of his feelings upon this subject. 
They were all condensed in his statement: "The only 
government that I recognize is that power which 
establishes justice in the land." It is not surprising, 
then, that when the arch-abolitionist John Brown 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 303 

visited Concord in 1857 as Mr. Sanborn's guest, he 
should have found Thoreau among the warmest of 
his new friends. 

It is interesting to set beside this statement of 
Thoreau's attitude toward slavery a few passages il- 
lustrating the reaction of his independent mind upon 
another public matter — the panic of 1857 — which 
loomed up just then as a thing of far greater signifi- 
cance than the agitation of the abolitionists. "This 
general failure, both private and public, is rather 
occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we 
have at the helm, — that justice is always done. If 
our merchants did not most of them fail, and the 
banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world 
would be staggered. ... If thousands are thrown 
out of employment, it suggests that they were not 
well employed. Why don't they take the hint? It 
is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. 
What are you industrious about? . . . Not merely 
the Brook Farm and Fourierite communities, but 
now the community generally has failed. But there 
is the moonshine still, serene, beneficent, and un- 
changed. Hard times, I say, have this value, among 
others, that they show us what such promises are 
worth — where the sure banks are. I heard some 
merchant praised the other day because he had paid 
some of his debts, though it took nearly all he had 
(why, I've done as much as that myself many times, 



304 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

and a little more), and then gone to board. What 
if he has? I hope he's got a good boarding-place, 
and can pay for it. It's not everybody that can. . . . 
Only think of a man in this new world, in his log 
cabin, in the midst of a corn and potato patch, talk- 
ing about money being hard! So are flints hard; 
there is no alloy in them. What has that to do with 
his raising his food, cutting his wood (or breaking 
it), keeping in-doors when it rains, and, if need be, 
spinning and weaving his clothes?" This airy and 
whimsical dismissal of the very real evils of a period 
of commercial depression is not exactly satisfactory, 
although it is quite possible to understand Thoreau's 
point of view, and to realize that such judgments 
were the natural outcome of his philosophy of con- 
duct. 

The summer of 1858 drew Thoreau once more 
to the mountains, and early in June we find him, 
in company with Blake, climbing Monadnoc, and 
camping on its top in an extemporized hut. Chan- 
ning says of his mountain climbing: "He ascended 
such hills as Monadnoc by his own path; would lay 
down his map on the summit and draw a line to the 
point he proposed to visit below, — perhaps forty 
miles away on the landscape, and set off bravely to 
make the short-cut. The lowland people wondered 
to see him scaling the heights as if he had lost his 
way, or at his jumping over their cow-yard fences, — 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 305 

asking if he had fallen from the clouds." A month 
later we find him starting for the White Mountains 
in the company of his neighbor Edward Hoar. 
They journeyed from Concord in a wagon, and 
Thoreau thought the horse more of an impediment 
than a help. He also noted with regret the summer 
hotels that had been built among the mountains 
since his former visit nearly twenty years earlier. 
"Give me a spruce house made in the rain," he said. 
Having climbed to the summit of Mt. Washington, 
where the first " tip-top house" had already been 
put up and moored, he asked the landlord for a guide 
to Tuckerman's Ravine. On being told that it was 
too foggy for a guide to find the trail, he said: "If we 
cannot have a guide we will find it ourselves." 
Striking a bee-line, with the aid of map and pocket- 
compass, the ravine was soon reached. The narra- 
tive may be continued in Sanborn's words: "They 
went safely down the steep stairs into the chasm, 
where they found the midsummer iceberg they 
wished to see. But as they walked down the bed 
of the Peabody River, flowing from this ravine, over 
bowlders five or six feet high, the heavy packs on 
their shoulders weighed them down, and finally, 
Thoreau's foot slipping, he fell and sprained his 
ankle. He rose, but had not limped five steps from 
the place where he fell, when he said, 'Here is the 
arnica, anyhow,' — reached out his hand and plucked 



306 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the Arnica mollis, which he had not before found 
anywhere." The accident laid him up in camp for 
several days, after which they were joined by Blake 
and two others, completing the excursion in such 
enlarged company. 

In November, 1858, Thoreau had the unexpected 
news that his English friend Cholmondeley was in 
Montreal, and on his way to Concord. His destina- 
tion was the West Indies, and he tried to persuade 
Thoreau to accompany him, which the latter might 
have done, had it not been for the serious illness of 
his father. Leaving after a few days, Cholmondeley 
went to Virginia, then changed his plans and returned 
to Concord for another brief visit, then went back 
to England by the roundabout way of Canada and 
Jamaica. John Thoreau, after a lingering illness, 
died February 3, 1859, aged seventy-two. This re- 
duced the family circle to the brother and sister, 
Henry and Sophia, and the mother, who lived until 
1872. After the father's death, the children carried 
on the family business of pencil-making and the 
preparation of graphite, and Thoreau gained a 
little additional income by an occasional lecture. 
As a platform speaker, he was not particularly im- 
pressive, and he was always rather surprised that 
people should wish to hear him. He once wrote: 
"I am from time to time congratulating myself on 
my general want of success as a lecturer; apparent 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 307 

want of success, but is it not a real triumph ? I do 
my work clean as I go along, and they will not be 
likely to want me anywhere again. So there is no 
danger of my repeating myself, and getting to a 
barrel of sermons, which you must upset, and begin 
again with." And again: " Perhaps it always costs 
me more than it comes to to lecture before a promis- 
cuous audience. It is so irreparable an injury done 
to my modesty even, — I become so indurated. . . . 
The lecturer gets fifty dollars a night, but what be- 
comes of his winter? What consolation will it be 
hereafter to have fifty thousand dollars for living in 
the world ? I should not like to exchange any of my 
life for money." Thoreau's lectures, like Emerson's, 
were made by delving into his note-books and jour- 
nals, and then welding the rescued fragments into 
some sort of coherency. 

On one occasion, at least, it must be admitted that 
Thoreau was an effective, because an impassioned, 
public speaker. Slavery was the one subject that 
could arouse him, as it aroused Emerson, from his 
attitude of serene indifferentism toward political con- 
troversies. And when John Brown, with his small 
band of devoted followers, made his famous raid at 
Harper's Ferry, Thoreau was all eager attention. 
Brown had been in Concord only a few days before, 
and it was from Sanborn's house, and from intimate 
fellowship with Thoreau and Emerson, that he had 



308 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

started for Virginia. Brown fell into the hands of 
his captors October 16, 1859, and for the next seven 
weeks the country followed the lingering course of 
his trial, and awaited in breathless suspense its fore- 
gone conclusion. While others hesitated to speak, 
or temporized with their convictions, Thoreau did 
not. On the Sunday evening just two weeks after 
Brown's capture, a large audience gathered in the 
vestry of the old parish church of Concord (the very 
room in which the Provincial Congress of Massachu- 
setts had met in 1774 to plan for armed resistance to 
Great Britain), and listened to the most important, 
and altogether the weightiest, of all Thoreau's pub- 
lic addresses. The address was repeated in Wor- 
cester a few days later, then the following Sunday in 
Boston, and its subsequent publication in the news- 
papers gave it a wide reading. The next year, it ap- 
peared, together with Emerson's two speeches in 
behalf of Brown, in the volume entitled " Echoes 
from Harper's Ferry." On December 21, the day 
of Brown's execution, Concord held a funeral serv- 
ice in his honor, and in the arrangements for this 
Thoreau took an active part. 

A few extracts from "A Plea for Captain John 
Brown" must be given to illustrate the temper and 
the logic of this utterance : " On the whole, my respect 
for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh 
a million, is not being increased these days. . . . 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 309 

It turns what sweetness I have to gall, to hear, or 
hear of, the remarks of some of my neighbors. 
When we heard at first that he was dead, one of my 
townsmen observed that 'he died as the fool dieth'; 
which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a like- 
ness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, 
craven-hearted, said disparagingly, that he threw 
his life away, because he resisted the government. 
Which way would they have thrown their lives, pray? 
— such as would praise a man for attacking singly 
an ordinary band of thieves and murderers. . . . 
'But he won't gain anything by it.' Well, no, I 
don't suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day 
for being hung, take the year round; but then he 
stands a chance to save a considerable part of his 
soul, — and such a soul! — when you do not. No 
doubt you can get more in your market for a quart 
of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the 
market that heroes carry their blood to. . . . What 
have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane 
representatives to Congress for, of late years? — to 
declare with effect what kind of sentiments? All 
their speeches put together and boiled down, — and 
probably they themselves will confess it, — do not 
match for manly directness and force, and for simple 
truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown, 
on the floor of the Harper's Ferry engine-house, — 
that man whom you are about to hang, to send 



310 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

to the other world, though not to represent you 
there. . . . The same indignation that is said to 
have cleared the temple once will clear it again. 
The question is not about the weapon, but the spirit 
in which you use it. No man has appeared in 
America, as yet, who loved his fellow-man so well, 
and treated him so tenderly. He lived for him. He 
took up his life and he laid it down for him. . . . 
This event advertises me that there is such a fact 
as death, — the possibility of a man's dying. It seems 
as if no man had ever lived in America before; for 
in order to die you must first have lived. I don't 
believe in the hearses, and palls, and funerals that 
they have had. There was no death in the case, be- 
cause there had been no life; they merely rotted or 
sloughed off, pretty much as they had rotted or 
sloughed along. No temple's veil was rent, only a 
hole dug somewhere. Let the dead bury their dead. 
The best of them fairly ran down like a clock. Frank- 
lin, — Washington, — they were let off without dying; 
they were merely missing one day. I hear a good 
many pretend that they are going to die ; or that they 
have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll 
defy them to do it. They haven't got life enough in 
them. They'll deliquesce like fungi; and keep a 
hundred eulogists mopping the spot where they left 
off. Only half a dozen or so have died since the 
world began." How Ibsen — the Ibsen of "Brand" 






HENRY DAVID THOREAU 311 

and "Peer Gynt" — would have relished these ob- 
servations! And how effective is this repressed in- 
dignation, this scarcely veiled contempt for the pet- 
tiness and hypocrisy of the commonplace life! The 
whole address reminds one of a volcanic crater whose 
crust has cooled, and shows no visible sign of the 
fires beneath, but leaves no doubt of the intensity of 
the heat just below the surface. 

A second encampment on Monadnoc, in company 
with Channing, was made in the summer of i860. 
"We went up in the rain — wet through — and found 
ourselves in a cloud there at mid-afternoon, in no 
situation to look about for the best place for a 
camp. . . . Having a good hatchet, I proceeded to 
build a substantial house, which Channing declared 
the handsomest he ever saw. (He never camped out 
before, and was, no doubt, prejudiced in its favor.) 
This was done about dark, and by that time we were 
nearly as wet as if we had stood in a hogshead of 
water. We then built a fire before the door, directly 
on the site of our little camp of two years ago, and 
it took a long time to burn through its remains to the 
earth beneath. Standing before this, and turning 
round slowly, like meat that is roasting, we were as 
dry, if not drier, than ever, after a few hours. . . . 
After several nights' experience, Channing came to 
the conclusion that he was ' lying outdoors,' and in- 
quired what was the largest beast that might nibble 



3 I2 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

his legs there. I fear that he did not improve all the 
night, as he might have done, to sleep. I had asked 
him to go and spend a week there. We spent five 
nights, being gone six days, for C. suggested that 
six working days made a week, and I saw that he 
was ready to decamp. However, he found his ac- 
count in it as well as I." Channing found a literal 
account in this excursion, and gives it to us in his 
biography of Thoreau. He tries to be enthusiastic 
about the experience, but the true inwardness of his 
feelings comes out when he writes in the following 
strain: "The fatigue, the blazing sun, the face getting 
broiled, the pint-cup never scoured, shaving unut- 
terable, your stockings dreary, having taken to peat, 
— not all the books in the world, as Sancho says, 
could contain the adventures of a week in camping." 
Thoreau's constitution, hardened as it was to out- 
door life, had been giving way for several years, and 
it was rather reckless for him to subject it to such a 
strain as this. As early as 1855, he had spoken of his 
"months of feebleness," and in 1857 of his "two- 
year old invalidity.' ' The illness which was finally 
to prove fatal began with a severe cold in December, 
i860, which grew into a distinct case of tuberculosis. 
His last expedition, made in the spring and summer 
of the following year, was the first that he had eve] 
made with health as a prime object of pursuit, and 
was the most extensive of all his journeyings. In 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 313 

company with young Horace Mann, son of the great 
educator, he set out for the Mississippi. He made 
his way to St. Paul, remained in that vicinity for 
about three weeks, and then went some three hun- 
dred miles up the Minnesota River to Redwood, an 
important Indian agency. Here he witnessed a 
Sioux council and dance. He returned to Concord 
in July, not apparently benefited by his trip. The 
letters to Sanborn and Ricketson in which the Minne- 
sota journey is described were the last written by 
Thoreau's own hand. As far as he could write at 
all during the few remaining months of his life, he 
worked upon the preparation of manuscripts for the 
" Atlantic Monthly." Fields had now become the 
editor of that magazine, and Thoreau was willing 
to resume the relations which he had broken off at 
the time of Lowell's editorship. Nothing save the 
early paper on "Chesuncook" appeared during his 
lifetime, but the " Atlantic" published three essays 
in the year of his death, and four others in the two 
years immediately following. 

Consumption made rapid progress during the win- 
ter of 186 1- 1 862. Just before Christmas, Sophia 
Thoreau wrote of her brother: "His spirits do not 
fail him; he continues in his usual serene mood, which 
is very pleasant for his friends as well as himself." 
Three weeks later, Alcott wrote: "He grows feebler 
day by day, and is evidently failing and fading from 



314 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

our sight. He gets some sleep, has a pretty good 
appetite, reads at intervals, takes notes of his read- 
ings, and likes to see his friends, conversing, however, 
with difficulty, as his voice partakes of his general 
debility. . . . Our woods and fields are sorrowing, 
though not in sombre, but in robes of white, so 
becoming to the piety and probity they have known 
so long, and soon are to miss." He had all kinds of 
visitors during his illness, including the kind who are 
concerned about people's souls. "One world at a 
time," was his reply to the visitor who tried to direct 
his thoughts to the future life, and to the visitor who 
was anxious to know if he had made his peace with 
God he replied that he had "never quarrelled with 
Him." The last words of the last letter written at 
his dictation were these: "You ask particularly 
after my health. I suppose that I have not many 
months to live ; but, of course, I know nothing about 
it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much 
as ever, and regret nothing." He died May 6, 1862, 
and was buried in Sleepy Hollow. Emerson made 
the funeral address, and Alcott read "Sic Vita," one 
of Thoreau's poems. He had said, in anticipation of 
his end: "For joy I could embrace the earth. I shall 
delight to be buried in it. And then I think of those 
amongst men who will know that I love them, though 
I tell them not." 
It is pleasant to take leave of Thoreau with these 






HENRY DAVID THOREAU 315 

words echoing in our ears. They are the best refu- 
tation of the accusations of misanthropy and egotism 
that were once foolishly made against him. Hardly 
more felicitous were the labels attached to him by 
those of his contemporaries who had some under- 
standing of his mode of thought. A grain of truth 
but barely more than a grain — is expressed in such 
designations as a " Yankee Stoic" and an " American 
Diogenes." Just what was meant by the Scotchman 
who described him for us as a "stoico-epicurean 
adiaphorist" is not easy to explain. Channing was 
the happiest of his nicknamers in calling him the 
" poet-naturalist," although he was hardly a poet in 
the literal sense, and his naturalist quality was not 
of the sort which science stamps with approval. His 
lifelong aim was to lay hold upon the essentials of 
life, to escape from the trickery of its conventions, to 
realize himself in the fullest sense. Even in youth, 
his aspiration thus rose toward its aim: 

"Great God! I ask thee for no meaner pelf, 
Than that I may not disappoint myself; 
That in my conduct I may soar as high 
As I can now discern with this clear eye. 
That my weak hand may equal my firm faith, 
And my life practice more than my tongue saith; 
That my low conduct may not show, 

Nor my relenting lines, 
That I thy purpose did not know, 
Or overrated thy designs." 



316 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

The years brought ample fulfilment of this prayer, 
and their rewards, if not those for which most men 
strive, were those which he most greatly desired. 
"As a preacher," he wrote, "I should be prompted 
to tell men, not so much how to get their wheat-bread 
cheaper, as of the bread of life compared with which 
that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and 
he becomes a skilful economist at once. He'll not 
waste much time in earning those." Thus feeding 
his soul upon Dante's pan degli 'Angeli, he developed 
that rich and distinctive personality which, as his 
life recedes from our view, becomes yearly a more 
instructive example to his fellow-men, quickening 
their individualism, and arousing them to the serious- 
ness of the task of saving their separate souls. 
Thoreau's own soul, said Emerson at the funeral, 
"was made for the noblest society; he had in a short 
life exhausted the capabilities of this world ; wherever 
there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find 
a home." 






CrC^/^^^&O^*^*^ 




GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 



In the line of American essayists, the legitimate 
successor of Irving, Emerson, and Thoreau is found 
in George William Curtis. The delicate charm, the 
sunny temper, and the genial satirical gift that made 
Irving the idol of American readers in the days of 
our new-born literature were renewed half a century 
later in the personality of the occupant of the Easy 
Chair. The gracious spiritual effluence of Emerson 
molded his life in its most impressionable period, 
and the sturdy individualism of Thoreau taught him 
the lesson of the self-centred soul, the strength that 
springs from devotion to high principle and faith in 
the guidance of the light within. And when the time 
was ripe, and his powers had reached full maturity, 
he bettered the instruction of his predecessors by 
entering the arena, throwing himself into the turmoil 
of civic strife, and becoming a practical force for the 
furthering of the ends of righteousness in public life. 
This flowering of philosophy into deed, this dedica- 
tion of literary faculty to the service of the state, at a 
sacrifice of personal ease and inclination that is almost 

317 






318 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Miltonic in its example, gives to Curtis his crowning 
distinction as a figure in American literature. When 
he was just fifty years old, and had achieved a 
commanding position among our men of light and 
leading, his friend Lowell addressed him in words 
which exactly described both the sacrifice and the 
achievement. 

"Had letters kept you, every wreath were yours; 
Had the World tempted, all its chariest doors 
Had swung on flattered hinges to admit 
Such high-bred manners, such good-natured wit; 
At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve ? 
And both invited, but you would not swerve, 
All meaner prizes waiving that you might 
In civic duty spend your heat and light, 
Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain 
Refusing posts men grovel to obtain. 
Good Man all own you; what is left me, then, 
To heighten praise with but Good Citizen?" 

The story of Curtis's life will reveal how admirably it 
is fitted by this description. 

In May, 1635, when the great Puritan emigration 
was at full tide, the Elizabeth and Ann left the port 
of London for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She 
carried seven passengers, duly certified as in "con- 
formitie to the orders and discipline of the Church 
of England ", having "taken the oaths of alleg: and 
suprem: ", one of the seven being Henry Curtis, aged 
twenty-seven. He settled at Watertown, afterwards 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 319 

removing to Sudbury. His son Ephraim became the 
first settler of Worcester. Ephraim's son John fought 
in the French and Indian War, was a loyalist at the 
outbreak of the Revolution, and with difficulty made 
his peace with his fellow- townsmen. John's great- 
grandson George was born in Worcester in 1796, 
removed to Providence, Rhode Island, married a 
daughter of Chief Justice Burrill of that State, became 
a United States Senator, and, as such, opposed the 
Missouri Compromise. He had two sons, James 
Burrill Curtis and George William Curtis. His wife 
died when George was two years of age, and he took 
a second wife nine years later. He is described by 
his oldest son as a man of "high integrity, sound, 
practical judgment, and excellent business talents, 
together with political and literary taste. He was 
popular among his associates — leading business and 
professional men — in Providence and New York. 
He was most affectionate and beloved in his family, 
and extremely kind and indulgent to his children, 
though sharp and severe in his demands as to manners 
and morals. He valued truthfulness and honesty 
above all other qualities, and his example and 
influence in these respects early impressed both 
George and me very deeply." The same writer 
describes the second wife (the only mother that 
George ever knew) as "a woman of much good 
sense and practical energy, of strong and generous 



3 20 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

sympathies, and of high public spirit and piety: and 
she added to these things literary cultivation decidedly 
above the average. She wrote with ease, whether in 
letters or compositions, a full, graceful, flowing, de- 
lightful English style.'' 

Such were the parental influences that shaped the 
childhood of George William Curtis, born in the 
sixth generation from the pioneer settler, in Provi- 
dence, February 24, 1824. For five years, from six to 
eleven, he was sent to school at Jamaica Plain, near 
Boston, then, when his father remarried in 1835, he 
was placed in the Providence schools, where he 
studied for four years. Then, in 1839, when the boy 
was fifteen, he went with his father to live in New 
York. This ended his school education, although 
he continued to receive instructions at home, from 
parents and tutors, for some years longer. Of his 
boyhood life no detailed account has been preserved, 
but some facts may be gathered from his early books, 
which were often reminiscent as well as fanciful. 
" Trumps " gives us some glimpses of his school days 
at Jamaica Plain, and "Prue and I" provides a 
pleasant picture of the way in which Providence 
appealed to the boy's free and eager imagination. 
He was particularly captivated by the shipping at 
the docks. " Sometimes a great ship, an East 
Indiaman, with rusty, seamed, blistering sides and 
dingy sails, came slowly moving up the harbor, with 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 321 

an air of indolent self-importance and consciousness 
of superiority, which inspired me with profound re- 
spect. . . . Long after the confusion of unloading 
was over, and the ship lay as if all voyages were 
ended, I dared to creep timorously along the edges 
of the dock, and, at great risk of falling in the black 
water of its huge shadow, I placed my hand upon the 
hot hulk and so established a mystic and exquisite 
connection with Pacific Islands; with palm groves 
and all the passionate beauties they embower; with 
jungles, Bengal tigers, pepper, and the crushed feet 
of Chinese fairies. I touched Asia, the Cape of Good 
Hope, and the Happy Islands. I would not believe 
that the heat I felt was of our Northern sun; to my 
finer sympathy, it burned with equatorial fervor." 
Some ten years later, these day-dreams were to be 
realized in part, as far as might be from a sojourn in 
Palestine and a voyage up the Nile. 

George's brother Burrill, two years his senior, was 
his schoolmate and constant companion at home and 
abroad for about twenty-five years. This brother, 
who afterwards went to England to live, is ideally 
sketched, both as to person and character, under the 
guise of "our cousin the curate " in the pages of " Prue 
and I." "His mind, large in grasp and subtle in per- 
ception, naturally commanded his companions, while 
the lustre of his character allured those who could not 
understand him. The asceticism occasionally showed 



322 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

itself is a vein of hardness, or rather of severity, in his 
treatment of others. He did what he thought it his 
duty to do, but he forgot that few could see the right 
so closely as he, and very few of those few could so 
calmly obey the least command of conscience. . . . 
I have not seen him for many years; but when we 
parted, his head had the intellectual symmetry of 
Milton's, without the Puritanic stoop, and with the 
stately grace of a cavalier." After George's death, 
his biographer, Mr. Edward Cary, was supplied by 
this brother with notes of their life during the ten 
years following their return to Providence from the 
school at Jamaica Plain. Those notes are chiefly 
interesting as revealing the influence of Emerson 
upon the two boys, an influence which allied them to 
the transcendental movement, and made them fellow- 
boarders at Brook Farm. "Our coming into contact 
with this movement," we read in these notes, "and 
especially with its leader and moderator, proved to be 
the cardinal event of our youth; and I cannot but 
think that the seed then sown took such deep root as 
to flower continuously in our later years, and make us 
both the confirmed 'independents' that we were and 
are, while fully conscious at the same time of the 
obligation of living in all possible harmony with our 
fellows." The boys first heard Emerson lecture on 
"The Over-Soul" in Providence, and afterwards 
frequently there and elsewhere. George was perhaps 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 323 

less stirred than his brother, "but he so far shared 
my enthusiastic admiration as to be led a willing 
captive to Emerson's attractions, and to the incidental 
attractions of the movement of which he was the 
head." The brothers were not carried away by the 
extravagances of the movement (any more than 
Emerson himself was), although Burrill experimented 
with vegetarianism, and both affected certain harm- 
less vagaries of dress. They did not enlist themselves 
in any " cause," and were "intent mainly, not on 
reforming others, or reforming society at large, but 
on the ordering of our own individual lives." 

When the Curtis family went to live in New York 
in 1839, they made a home in Washington Place, and 
fitted into what was in the best sense the best society 
of the city. They were members of the Unitarian 
congregation of Dr. Dewey and Dr. Bellows. The 
senior Curtis was cashier, and afterwards president, 
of the Bank of Commerce. George continued his 
studies, indulged in a brief mercantile experiment, 
and was already developing the social graces that 
made him beloved by all his associates. In 1842, 
when George was eighteen and his brother twenty, 
they told their father that they wished to join the 
Brook Farm Community, not as members, but as 
scholars and boarders. The father looked askance 
at the project, but, as they were already convalescing 
from their attack of transcendentalism, never having 



324 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

had it in other than a mild form, his consent was 
given, and the next year and a half was spent among 
the plain livers, high thinkers, and dilettante farmers 
of West Roxbury. The community had been in 
existence for only a year, and its members were still 
in the frolic mood, hopeful and high-hearted. 

Most accounts of Brook Farm concern themselves 
with its community life, the sharing of toil and rec- 
reation that was its fundamental principle. The 
fact that it was also a school to which young people 
might be sent, paying for their board and tuition, is 
often lost sight of in the discussion. As a matter of 
fact, the school was much more profitable than the 
farm, and was largely attended by boys and girls 
whose parents took a sympathetic interest in the 
principles of the association. It offered a six years' 
college preparatory course, and a three years' course 
in practical agriculture. Each pupil, however, was 
required to give one hour a day to some sort of man- 
ual work. The Curtis boys went there as scholars, 
to study philosophy with George Ripley, Greek and 
German with Charles A. Dana, Latin and music with 
John S. D wight. Writing home soon after he was 
settled in his new surroundings, George thus describes 
them: "My life is summery enough here. We break- 
fast at six, and from seven to twelve I am at work. 
After dinner, these fair days permit no homage but 
to their beauty, and I am fain to woo their smiles in 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 325 

the shades and sunlight of the woods. A festal life 
for me before whom the great sea stretches which 
must be sailed; yet this summer air teaches life- 
navigation, and I listen to the flowing streams, and 
to the cool rush of the winds among the trees, with 
an increase of that hope which is the only pole-star 
of life." 

Long years afterward, Curtis had a good deal to 
say, writing in the Easy Chair, about these halycon 
days of his ripening manhood. "The society at 
Brook Farm was composed of every kind of person. 
There were the ripest scholars, men and women of 
the most aesthetic culture and accomplishment, young 
farmers, seamstresses, mechanics, preachers — the in- 
dustrious, the lazy, the conceited, the sentimental. 
But they were associated in such a spirit and under 
such conditions that, with some extravagance, the 
best of everybody appeared, and there was a kind of 
high esprit de corps — at least, in the earlier or golden 
age of the colony. There was plenty of steady, essen- 
tial, hard work, for the founding of an earthly 
paradise upon a rough New England farm is no 
pastime. But with the best intention, and much 
practical knowledge and industry and devotion, 
there was in the nature of the case an inevitable lack 
of method, and the economical failure was almost a 
foregone conclusion. But there were never such 
witty potato-patches and such sparkling cornfields 



326 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

before or since. The weeds were scratched out of 
the ground to the music of Tennyson or Browning, 
and the nooning was as gay and bright as any brilliant 
midnight at Ambrose's. But in the midst of all was 
one figure, the practical farmer, an honest neighbor 
who was not drawn to the enterprise by any spiritual 
attraction, but was hired at good wages to superintend 
the work, and who always seemed to be regarding 
the whole affair with the most good-natured wonder 
as a prodigious masquerade." 

Thus the philosophical essayist, summing it all up 
in the light of reflection. But to the boy we suspect 
that it had its more trivial aspects. The following 
notes are by Mrs. Kirby, who was at Brook Farm 
for about the same period as Curtis. "Once we had 
a masquerade picnic in the woods, where we were 
thrown into convulsions of laughter at the sight of 
George W. Curtis dressed as Fanny Ellsler, in a low- 
necked, short-sleeved, book-muslin dress and a tiny 
ruffled apron, making courtesies and pirouetting 
down the path. ... In the midwinter we had a 
fancy-dress ball in the parlors of the Pilgrim House, 
when the Shaws and Russells, generous friends of 
the association, came attired as priests and dervishes. 
The beautiful Anna Shaw was superb as a portly 
Turk in quilted robe, turban, mustache, and cimeter, 
and bore herself with grave dignity. George W. 
Curtis, as Hamlet, led the quadrille with Carrie Shaw 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 327 

as a Greek girl. His sad and solemn 'reverence' 
contrasted charmingly with her sunny ease. He acted 
the Dane to the life, his bearing, the melancholy 
light in his eyes, his black-plumed head-cover, and 
his rapier glittering under his short black cloak, 
which fell apart in the dance, were all perfect. It was 
a picture long to be remembered, and as long as I 
could watch these two I had no desire to take part in 
the dance myself." In these diversions, George was 
always a leading spirit, and he also frequently gave 
pleasure to his associates by singing for them. We 
note with satisfaction testimony to the effect that he 
was "not ever guilty of singing a comic song." He 
seems to have made himself agreeable in as many 
ways as possible, now waiting on the table, now 
trimming the lamp-wicks, now helping the women 
to hang out the washing, and afterwards dropping 
on the dancing-room floor the clothes-pins that had 
inadvertently found their way into some pocket. 
One of his associates thus sets down the impression 
that he made upon them. "George, though only 
eighteen, seemed much older, like a man of twenty- 
five, possibly, with a peculiar elegance, if I may so 
express it; great and admirable attention, as I rec- 
ollect, when listening to anyone; courteous recog- 
nition of others' convictions and even prejudices; and 
never a personal animosity of any kind." 
At the close of their second summer at Brook Farm, 



328 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

the brothers left it to spend the fall and winter mainly 
in their father's New York home. One of the warm- 
est friendships that George had formed during his 
stay in the community was with John S. Dwight, who 
taught him music. His letters to Dwight during the 
four years following number upwards of two score, 
and are the chief reliance of the biographer for the 
period preceding the departure of Curtis for his four 
years' sojourn abroad. The first of these letters 
describe a jaunt to Providence and Newport made 
before the return to New York. When at last settled 
at home, Curtis took stock of his recollections, and 
wrote: " Already my life at the Farm is removed and 
transfigured. It stands for so much in my experience, 
and is so fairly rounded, that I know the experience 
could never return, tho' the residence might be 
renewed. When we mend the broken chain, we see 
ever after the point of union." Some months later, 
still writing to Dwight, he says: "The Arcadian 
beauty of the place is lost to me, and would have 
been lost, had there been no change. Seen from this 
city life, you cannot think how fair it seems. So 
calm a congregation of devoted men and true women 
performing their perpetual service to the Idea of their 
lives, and clothed always in white garments. . . . 
The effect of a residence at the Farm, I imagine, was 
not a greater willingness to service in the kitchen, 
and to particularly assert that labor was divine, but 






GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 329 

discontent that there was such a place as a kitchen." 
He had clearly learned that getting away from the 
disagreeable realities of life was not dealing with 
them in the most serviceable spirit, that, as Goethe 
says, character is developed only by plunging into 
the stream of human activity. 

Whether he had in mind that particular dictum of 
the German poet is uncertain, but he was reading a 
good deal of German at the time, and these letters 
make particular mention of Goethe, who puzzled but 
impressed him, and whose leaven was clearly work- 
ing in him. Other reading referred to includes nu- 
merous old English poets and dramatists, Bunyan, 
Montaigne, Amadis de Gaul, St. Augustine, and the 
f Elements of Agricultural Chemistry." But the prin- 
cipal preoccupation of these letters is, naturally 
enough, with musical matters, for he was writing to 
a musician, and was himself deeply interested in the 
subject. It was a good season for music in New 
York; Ole Bull and Vieuxtemps were making their 
first American appearances, and the Philharmonic 
Society was giving concerts, one of which he de- 
scribes as " certainly the finest concert ever given in 
the country." What music meant to him, then and 
ever afterwards, may be seen from these words: 
"Why do I love music enough to be only a lover, and 
cannot offer it a life-devoted service? Yet the lover 
serves in his sort, and if I may not minister to it, it 



330 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

cannot fail to dignify and ennoble my life." The 
early stirrings of Curtis's literary ambition were 
prompted by the art which he thus loved, and an 
essay on "Music and Ole Bull," published in W. H. 
Channing's paper, "The Present," marked his first 
appearance in print. There is not much about the 
Norwegian violinist in this fledgling composition, 
but there is a sound feeling for the spiritual signifi- 
cance of the tonal art. 

In the spring of 1844, the brothers went to live at 
Concord "for the better furtherance of our main and 
original end, — the desire to unite in our own persons 
the freedom of a country life with moderate outdoor 
manual occupation, and with intellectual cultiva- 
tion and pursuits." These are the words of Bur- 
rill Curtis, but they accurately express the feelings 
of his brother as well. The writer goes on to outline 
the new course of life: "At Concord we first took up 
our residence in the family of an elderly farmer, 
recommended by Mr. Emerson. We gave up half 
the day (except in hay time, when we gave the whole 
day) to sharing the farm work indiscriminately with 
the farm laborers. The rest of the day we devoted 
to other pursuits, or to social intercourse or corre- 
spondence; and we had a flat-bottomed rowing-boat 
built for us, in which we spent very many afternoons 
on the pretty little river. For our second season, we 
removed to another farm and farmer's house, nearer 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 331 

Mr. Emerson and Walden Pond, where we occupied 
only a single room, making our own beds and living 
in the very simplest and most primitive style. A 
small piece of ground, which we hired of the farmer, 
we cultivated for ourselves, raising vegetables only 
and selling the superfluous produce, and distributing 
our time much as before." We may supply this out- 
line with a realistic shading by quoting from a letter 
of George Curtis, descriptive of the busy season of 
the haying, "Then comes morning and wakefulness 
and boots and breakfast and scythes and heat and 
fatigue, and all my venerable Joshuas endeavor in 
vain to make oxen stand still, and I heartily wish 
them and I back in our valley ruling the heavens and 
not bending scythes over unseen hassocks which do 
sometimes bend the words of our mouths into shapes 
resembling oaths! those most crooked of all speech, 
but therefore best and fittest for the occasional crooks 
of life, particularly mowing. Yet I mow and sweat 
and get tired very heartily, for I want to drink this 
cup of farming to the bottom and taste not only the 
morning froth but the afternoon and evening strength 
of dregs and bitterness, if there be any." 

It was during their second Concord season that 
the Curtises helped Thoreau build his famous cabin 
by Walden Pond. By this time they were on fairly 
intimate terms with the more famous Concordians, 
and even Hawthorne seems to have thawed a little 



332 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

in George's sunny presence. In the autumn of 1845, 
a sort of club was suggested by Emerson, to take 
the form of Monday evening gatherings in his study. 
The club lived only three weeks, and Curtis, writing 
a few years later for "The Homes of American Au- 
thors," gave a gently humorous account of the first 
of its meetings, "The philosophers sat dignified 
and erect. There was a constrained but very ami- 
able silence, which had the impertinence of a tacit 
inquiry, seeming to ask, 'Who will now proceed to 
say the finest thing that has ever been said ?' It was 
quite involuntary and unavoidable, for the members 
lacked that fluent social genius without which a club 
is impossible. It was a congress of oracles on the 
one hand, and of curious listeners upon the other. 
I vaguely remember that the Orphic Alcott invaded 
the Sahara of silence with a solemn 'Saying,' to 
which, after due pause, the honorable member for 
Blackberry Pastures [Thoreau] responded by some 
keen and graphic observations, while the Olympian 
host, anxious that so much material should be spun 
into something, beamed smiling encouragement upon 
all parties. But the conversation became more and 
more staccato. Miles Coverdale [Hawthorne], a 
statue of night and silence, sat a little removed, un- 
der a portrait of Dante, gazing imperturably upon 
the group, and as he sat in the shadow, his dark hair 
and eyes and suit of sables made him, in that society, 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 333 

the black thread of mystery which he weaves into 
his stories. ... I remember little else but a grave 
eating of russet apples by the erect philosophers, 
and a solemn disappearance into night. . . . The 
club struggled on valiantly, discoursing celestially, 
eating apples, until the third evening it vanished al- 
together." But there was social converse of a more 
pliable sort than this to be had in Concord, and 
music, without which Curtis would have felt that 
life was deprived of its crowning grace, and long 
rambles afield, and altogether it must have been a 
pleasant season. 

The letters written by Curtis to his father during 
this stay at Concord show that his serious attention 
was already given to public affairs. The social 
favorite, the amateur farmer, the dilettante musician, 
and the seeker after culture, did not make impossible 
the thoughtful observer of the perils that beset the 
nation, and the Curtis of later years is distinctly fore- 
shadowed in what the youth of twenty had to say 
about the relations of North and South, and the 
hypocrisy of the protective tariff. On the one sub- 
ject he writes: "It is most true that slavery will be 
abolished finally by the force of public opinion. 
But the North begins to groan already. While it 
recognizes the comity of nations and the solemn bond, 
it begins to speak of the separation with plain words. 
It may not be expedient just now, but then when will 



334 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

it be ? The old conviction that no law, no arrange- 
ment, no gain, can permit such direct participation 
as is provided by the Constitution, will at last dis- 
tinctly demand some change, and, even if the de- 
mand be postponed an hundred years, the South will 
not be ready. What gains the South by separation ? 
It will take Texas to its bosom and possibly conquer 
Mexico, but no state can endure the unalterable dis- 
approbation of the world. It would yield to the 
heat of universal censure like wax. It becomes a 
very grave question to every man. In the event of 
a disunion, the North might enjoy less commerce 
and a thousand decreased political advantages, but, 
as unto an individual who sacrifices to justice, there 
would be no real loss, but an eternal gain." 

That the young man saw the protective policy in 
its true light as a policy of selfish greed and national 
folly is evident from the following passages: "J have 
no right to protect American labor at the expense 
of foreign. What does it matter to me or to God 
whether Lowell or Manchester be ruined? Extend 
this into politics and it places us upon a wide, univer- 
sal platform. It does not suffer any American feel- 
ing or British feeling. While I confess that the Brit- 
ish laborers starve, I do not do very well to refuse to 
take what they make; I must pull down my restric- 
tive laws. I must say to the whole world, 'He who 
makes the best cloth shall have the best pay.' Then 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 335 

come English and all manner of foreign goods into 
the market and spoil our trade. But there is plainly 
but one way of paying for all imports, and that is by 
exports. Sugar and rice, potatoes and grain, must 
pay for all this, and there will be no more goods 
than I give an equivalent for. Then if there be not 
enough, let our own manufacturers turn to. Besides, 
commerce rests upon natural laws and not upon 
human will. If America is not a productive garden 
for some other land, no tariff will make her so. . . . 
Let us make a maxim in politics, that what is good 
for America is good for the other nations, — for all, 
because it is universal and unselfish. I have a right 
to wear fine linen, and use Paris handkerchiefs, if I 
choose to pay for them at their prices, and you have 
no right to make me buy yours by making theirs 
dearer — I see no necessity that Arnerican manufac- 
turers should flourish if they cannot do so without 
thrusting our neighbor out of the market. I will 
have no fear that God has given us a land that can- 
not support itself against the world in the noblest, 
freest manner, or, if I see it cannot, I shall also see 
that it is no proper home." 

Early in November, 1845, Curtis left Concord, 
returning for the winter to his father's New York 
house. It was a winter of enjoyment and growth. 
He heard a great deal of music, and continued his 
studies in literature, plunging deep into German, 



336 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

French, and Italian, in anticipation of the European 
travels already projected. In June, 1846, he laid 
his plan for a two years' journey before his father, 
suggesting that a letter of credit for ten thousand 
francs would be acceptable, "not that I shall expect 
to spend that sum in two years, but because it is well 
to have a generous background to our picture." It 
seems a modest request, and was willingly acceded 
to. Before leaving his native country, he gave a few 
weeks of the early summer to a last view of Concord, 
and a round of leave takings from his friends. He 
sailed early in August, on a packet from New York 
to Marseilles — a forty-six days' voyage— and did 
not return for four years. 

II 

It is a wonderful thing for a young American of 
twenty- two to see Europe for the first time, and 
Curtis was by nature as well as by training peculiarly 
susceptible to the impressions of foreign travel. His 
first winter was spent in Rome, and in the spring, 
after a sojourn in Naples and vicinity, he went north- 
ward to Florence, Genoa, Milan, and Venice, on the 
way to Germany. He kept a diary, from which his 
biographer makes a few extracts, and also wrote 
a series of letters to two New York newspapers, 
the " Courier and Inquirer" and the "Tribune," 
which Mr. Cary has also unearthed, and describes as 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 337 

"clear, straightforward reporting of the highest sort." 
Here is an expression, transmitted to Dwight, of that 
first European winter in Rome. "But it is the relics 
of the summer prime of the Rome of distant scholars 
and lovers, and the art which shines with an Indian- 
summer softness in the autumn of its decay, that 
rule here yet; for the imperial days have breathed a 
spirit into the air which broods over the city still. 
Although it is a modern capital, with noise and dirt 
and smells and nobility and fashionable drives, and 
walks and shops, and the red splendor of lacquered 
cardinals, and the triple-crowned Pope, in the arches 
which rise over modern chapels and of which they 
are built, in the ruined forum and aqueducts and 
baths and walls, are the decayed features of what 
was once greatest in this world, and which rules it 
from its grave. " A bit sophomorical, perhaps, but 
interesting and graceful, as is also this companion bit 
of description penned in Naples. "Two or three old 
castles stand out upon the bay from the city, pic- 
turesque objects for artists and lookers on, and in 
the hazy moonlight black and sharp masses reflected 
in the water. Sails and steamers and boats of all 
sorts are constantly dotting this space, and I am 
never weary of wandering along the shore on which 
lie the fishermen among their boats, with mournful 
looking women and black, matted-haired, gypsy-like 
children. 5 ' 



338 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

The American tourist with a chip on his shoulder 
was even then abroad, although less plentifully than 
in our later years, and Curtis occasionally ran foul 
of him, an experience which provoked this comment : 
"I have been quite unsphered since I have been 
here, in various ways, and have discovered how good 
every man's business is and how wide his horizon. 
There is a shabby Americanism which prowls pros- 
elyting through Europe, defying its spirit or its 
beauty or its difference to swerve it from what it calls 
its patriotism. Because America is contented and 
tolerably peaceful with a Republic, it prophesies 
that Europe shall see no happy days until all kings 
are prostrated, and belches that peculiar eloquence 
which prevails in small debating-clubs in retired 
villages at home. . . . We fancy a thousand things 
fine at home because we do not know how much 
finer the same may be, perhaps because we do not 
know that they are copies. Indeed, I feel as if it 
would be a good fruit of long travel to recover the 
knowledge of the fact which we so early lose — that 
we are born into the world with relations to men as 
men before we are citizens of a country with limited 
duties. A noble cosmopolitanism is the brightest 
jewel in a man's crown." 

After his year in Italy, Curtis worked northward, 
by way of Switzerland to Germany, and settled in 
Berlin for his second winter. The spring and sum- 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 339 

mer of 1848 were given to various journeyings — in 
the Saxon Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, the Rhine 
country, and the Alps once more — until he brought 
up in Paris for his third winter. It must be remem- 
bered that this was the great year of Revolution, and 
he was in the thick of the turmoil in several countries. 
But he seems to have contemplated this tremendous 
political movement without being carried away by 
its passion; he was sympathetic, but remained calm 
of mind and judicial in poise. He was still the 
seeker after culture rather than the soldier in the 
war of liberation. Ten years later, when he felt the 
sharper impact of political forces in his own country, 
he was to become as stout a fighter for freedom and 
justice as anyone could wish him to be, but that is 
another story. A long term of spiritual development 
was needed to transform the gentle dilettante of the 
'forties into the earnest civic champion of the 'fifties 
Curtis spent his fourth winter in Syria and on the 
Nile — the only part of his four Wander jahre to bear 
distinctive literary fruit — and returned to America in 
1850, definitely resolved to take up letters as a career. 
At this mid-century time, American literature was 
in a condition of vigorous growth, and its outlook 
was full of promise: most of the writers who con- 
tribute to the glory of our golden age had already 
become conspicuous in the public gaze. But if we 
wish to place ourselves at the viewpoint of 1850, we 



340 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

must keep constantly in mind two facts: first, that 
our literature was young, and, second, that its great- 
est names meant much less than they have come to 
mean now that the literary epoch which they created 
has been almost completely merged with the past. 
When Curtis wrote his first book, Poe had just died 
and Cooper was closing his career, but Irving, the 
dean of our literature, was living at Sunnyside with 
considerable work yet before him, and Bryant, our 
veteran poet, was not much past a ripe middle age. 
As for Curtis's contemporaries, their reputations 
were still in the process of making. Emerson, 
Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, and Holmes were 
his seniors by from fifteen to twenty years, but were 
hardly yet established in the affections of the public. 
Lowell, Whitman, Taylor, and Stedman were young 
men of about his own age, and only the first of the 
four had made an appearance in print. The field 
was fairly free to all comers, and the horizon was 
unbounded. 

In a letter to Dwight, dated March 17, 1851, in 
which Curtis makes excuses for having allowed his 
correspondence to lapse, he says: "May I also add 
the satiety of writing, which a man who has just pub- 
lished a book may be supposed to be experiencing. 
For I have published a book, a copy of which, with 
the heart of the author, pressed but not dried between 
the blank leaves, you should have had immediately 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 



341 



but for my absence from New York. It is called 
( Nile Notes of a Howadji,' and has thus far, being 
only a week old, received as flattering notice as any 
tremulous young author could have wished." The 
" tremulous young author" was just twenty-seven 
years old. The next month, he says of his book: 
"The Nile Notes I cannot hesitate to call successful, 
but not a great hit." The sale of twenty-five hundred 
copies within the first six months certainly justifies 
the modest claim. The book was favorably reviewed 
by the critics, and elicited praise from such men as 
Hawthorne and Whipple. An English edition was 
published with title changed to "Nile Notes of a 
Traveler," and an honorarium of five guineas was 
paid to the author. In England, also, the book was 
cordially received, and commended by such writers 
as Leigh Hunt, and in such journals as "The Spec- 
tator" and "The Athenaeum." 

There was, however, a fly in the ointment of all 
this praise. Certain passages descriptive of the danc- 
ing girls in Egypt were too vividly sensuous for the 
prudish taste of some of his American readers, and 
gave offense. That the author's purpose was pure 
and his intention legitimately artistic is beyond any 
question, but he appealed to a public bred in the 
puritan tradition, which affected to ignore the sensual 
side of life, and he found to his surprise and indig- 
nation that the descriptions in question were in some 



342 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

quarters held to be reprehensible. He was not a 
little concerned to learn that his own father disap- 
proved of this aspect of the book, and wrote to him 
with manly frankness in its defense. "When I was 
in Egypt I felt that the picture of impressions there 
had never been painted. Travelers have been either 
theorists and philosophers or young men with more 
money than brains, or professional travelers. In no 
book of any of them was the essentially sensuous, 
luxurious, languid and sense-satisfied spirit of East- 
ern life as it appears to the traveler represented. 
Here and in every newspaper notice (some dozen) 
that I have seen I find that I have achieved that suc- 
cess, and I find the same thing in all this outcry of 
immorality or indecency, or whatever it is, and which 
comes from New York alone. . . . The moral sense 
of New York is in general so vitiated that I care for 
it in general no more than for such particular con- 
demnations. My only sorrow is that you should 
unnecessarily condemn the book, and I am sorry, 
because it ought not to be condemned ! The dancing 
girls occupy no more space in the book than they 
occupied in the voyage, and they must always occupy 
a large space because they are the life and the most 
characteristically Eastern life of the river. . . . Had 
I written a book to please you, I would not have pub- 
lished it because it would not have pleased myself; 
and while I confess certain expressions are too broad 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 343 

and might well be altered, the essential spirit of the 
book is precisely what I wish it. I would not have 
it toned down, for I toned it up intentionally. My 
objections are not moral but literary. " In our own 
day, we have departed so far from those old-time 
notions of literary reticence that it is difficult to take 
seriously the strictures upon the "Nile Notes" that 
evoked this temperately indignant letter. 

In 1852, a second volume of impressions de voyage, 
"The Howadji in Syria," followed up the success 
of the first, and Curtis was fairly launched as an 
author. In both these books he cultivated a fan- 
tastic and artificial style, and adopted an irrespon- 
sible pose that must have surprised, and possibly 
disheartened, his earnest associates of the Brook 
Farm and Concord days. Both the style and the 
pose were abandoned when they had served their 
purpose, but the two books preserve for us a portrait 
of the young Curtis which we need to supplement 
the portrait of sterner lineaments that we figure in 
later years from the utterances of the publicist. It is 
the subjective interest of the books that has kept 
them alive, rather than their descriptions of the 
Oriental scene or their discussions of questions that 
no longer exist. One project of a serious nature, 
suggested by his Egyptian journeyings, he enter- 
tained for several years. This was a biography of 
Mehemet Ali, to whose picturesque career he had 



344 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

given one of the chapters of "The Howadji in Syria." 
But the plan was abandoned because he came to 
realize that the impelling motive was "the desire to 
do something which, by the orthodox and received 
standard, should be conceded to be a graver work 
than anything I have done," and this motive, he 
concluded, did not seem adequate to justify an under- 
taking so distinctly outside of his natural scope. 

Ill 

The year which was marked by the publication 
of Curtis's first book was also the year of his first 
platform appearance, and of his initiation into the 
"grind" of journalism. He was lecturing in Provi- 
dence in February, 1851, and in April joined Horace 
Greeley's staff on the New York "Tribune." For 
some three months he did odd jobs for the paper, 
writing criticisms of music and art, reading manu- 
script and exchanges, and occasionally venturing 
a leader. He was urged to buy an interest in the 
"Tribune" and identify himself with its interests, but 
declined, shrinking from "the utter slavery of such 
a life." Instead, he obtained a roving commission 
from the paper to make a round of visits to the 
summer resorts, and write a series of letters about 
them. This was much to his taste, and we find him 
saying in July, "Soon I shall spread sheeny vans for 
flight — Niagara, Sharon, Berkshire, Nahant, New- 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 



345 



port, and general bliss ad infinitum," The letters 
resulting from this outing were collected to make 
" Lotus Eating," his third book, published in 1852. 
To all outward seeming, Curtis was during these 
years a votary of pleasure in its refined and artistic 
sense, although he accepted a considerable amount 
of laborious taskwork. His personal appearance is 
described by William Winter, who met him at about 
this time at Longfellow's house in Cambridge. " He 
was a young man, lithe, slender, faultlessly apparelled, 
very handsome, who rose at my approach, turning 
upon me a countenance that beamed with kindness 
and a smile that was a welcome from the heart. His 
complexion was fair. His hair was brown, long, and 
waving. His features were regular and of exquisite 
refinement. His eyes were blue. His bearing was 
that of manly freedom and unconventional grace, 
and yet it was that of absolute dignity. He had the 
manner of the natural aristocrat — a manner that is 
born, not made ; a manner that is never found except 
in persons who are self-centered without being selfish ; 
who are intrinsically noble, wholly simple and wholly 
true." This description is strikingly like that made 
by Ruskin of Charles Eliot Norton when they first 
met on a Lake Geneva steamer, and it is pleasant to 
think in these terms of the two young men who were 
afterwards to be so closely linked in friendship and in 
devotion to the highest ideals of American citizenship. 



346 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

That these ideals were already taking shape in 
Curtis's thought is apparent from a letter of 1851, 
commenting upon a recent judicial pronouncement 
upon the question of fugitive slaves. "The very oath 
by which we bind ourselves, as officers of the human 
law, is the direct recognition of a higher and more 
solemn obligation, and the point where the citizen 
merges in the man he did not consider, apparently, a 
point for his notice; yet that is the essential point of 
the difficulty. Nobody denies the obligations of the 
law, but laws may be irretrievably bad, as in the 
case of the Roman Emperors, as now in Italy under 
Austrian rule, and by no obligation is a man bound 
to regard them. In fact, this pro-fugitive slave law 
movement and the doctrine of law at all hazards 
is, in politics, the same damnation that the infalli- 
bility of the Romish Church is in religion, and wher- 
ever, as with us, the tendency of the times is to indi- 
vidual and private judgment, the cause of the wrong 
is just as much lost in politics as it is in religion.' ' 
Thus we do discern in embryo our grave and serious 
Curtis of the later years when lotus-eating was no 
more, and the call to arms no longer fell unheeded 
upon his ears. His awakening to responsibility was 
a little retarded both by his temperament and by the 
easy conditions of his existence, but when the awaken- 
ing came it was final and complete. 

Curtis's three books had been published by the 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 347 

Harpers, and this fact naturally brought him into 
relations with the house, and with ''Harper's Maga- 
zine/' which began to appear in the year of his re- 
turn from abroad. It was not until 1854 that he as- 
sumed charge of the Easy Chair, but before that time 
he had been a frequent contributor to the Harper 
periodicals. More important for the history of these 
early years was his connection with " Putnam's 
Magazine," which was started in 1853, with Charles 
F. Briggs (Harry Franco) as chief, and Curtis and 
Parke Godwin as associates. It was in this maga- 
zine that "The Potiphar Papers" and "Prue and I" 
were published, and speaking of them, and of the 
writer's other editorial labors, Mr. Godwin says: 
"It was evidence of the fecundity and versatility of 
Mr. Curtis's gifts that while he was thus carrying 
forward two distinct lines of invention — the one full 
of broad comic effects, and the other of exquisite 
ideals — he was contributing to the entertainment of 
our public in a half dozen other different modes," 
writing criticisms of music and the drama, reviews 
of such new books as "Hiawatha," "Bleak House," 
the Bronte novels, and the poems of Arnold, Brown- 
ing and Tennyson, songs, short stories, sketches of 
travel, and miniature essays upon social subjects. 

The following is Mr. Godwin's account of the 
genesis of "The Potiphar Papers." "It was while 
providing entertainment for our readers in a second 



348 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

number that the vivacious Harry Franco exclaimed, 
'I have it! Let us, each of us, write an article on the 
state of parties. You, Howadji, who hung a little 
candle in the naughty world of fashion, will show it 
up in their light; you, Pathfinder, who consort with 
scurvy politicians, will say of it what they think; 
while I will discuss it in some way of my own' — 
which he never did. But Mr. Curtis and the other 
person were moved by the hint, and the former at 
once wrote a paper on the state of parties, which he 
called 'Our Best Society.' It was a severe criticism 
of the follies, foibles, and affectations of those circles 
which got their guests, as they did their edibles and 
carriages, from Brown, sexton and caterer, and 
which thought unlimited supplies of terrapin and 
champagne the test and summit of hospitality. 
Trenchant as it was, it was yet received with applause. 
Some thought the name of the leading lady more 
suggestive than facts warranted, and that in such 
phrases as 'rampant vulgarity in Brussels lace,' 'the 
orgies of rotten Corinth,' and 'the frenzied festivals 
of Rome in her decadence,' the brush was over- 
loaded. None the less, the satire delighted the pub- 
lic, and was soon followed by other papers in the 
same vein." These were "The Potiphar Papers," 
collected and published later in the year as the au- 
thor's fourth book. They took the town as nothing 
of the sort had taken it since the youthful disportings 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 349 

of Irving and his friends; they were clearly in the 
vein of Thackeray, but of a Thackeray less bitter and 
more fanciful, lacking in creative power, but faith- 
fully reproductive of the superficial aspects of a 
society based upon wealth which had been rapidly 
gotten, and which its possessors had not learned to 
use gracefully. That they sowed the seed of a better 
growth is the opinion of Mr. Cary, who says: 
"Many a young man, reading the papers from 
month to month, found erected between him and 
the temptation of a frivolous and essentially low life 
the light but not easily disregarded barrier of the 
scorn of a guide who was at once a moralist, a phi- 
losopher, and an accomplished gentleman." 

"Prue and I," written for " Putnam's' ' in 1855, 
and published the year following, was a book of very 
different character. It is a small book, made up of 
half a dozen magazine articles, flowingly improvised, 
and its main conception, to use Mr. Godwin's words, 
is "the steeping of the palpable and familiar in the 
glorious dyes of the ideal, which children's fables, 
folk-lore, Middle Age legends, and great poets have 
done for us time out of mind." When we received 
one of these papers, he goes on to say, "we chir- 
ruped over it, as if by some strange merit of our 
own we had entrapped a sunbeam. We followed the 
lines so intently, with such various exclamations of 
pleasure, that a stranger coming in might have sus- 



350 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

pected both of us to belong to that wonderful com- 
pany of eccentrics which the old scrivener summoned 
from the misty realms of tradition — the Wandering 
Jew; the priests of Prester John; the alchemists who 
sought to turn base metals into gold; the hunters of 
El Dorado, of Enchanted Islands, of the Fountain 
of Perpetual Youth; the makers of Utopias ever 
looming up and ever vanishing; even our own Cap- 
tain Symmes, who sails through his hole into the 
interior of the earth, where its jewels and precious 
metals are forged; and that famous friend of our 
childhood, the Baron Munchausen, whose signal 
claim to a place in a fictitious world was that he was 
the one most replenished liar out of all the thousand 
millions of humans — and brought them all together 
on the deck of the Flying Dutchman, to sail forever 
through foggy seas, onward, onward to unknown 
shores." In its essence, this series of fantastic pic- 
tures and situations, strung like beads upon a thin 
thread of every-day life and character, — embodies 
the philosophy of the contented mind, refined above 
sordid desires and material satisfactions, rich in the 
estates of the imagination, knowing full well the 
darkness of the depths into which the soul may fall, 
and soaring serenely above them into that ether, 
" higher than the sphery chime," where virtue sits 
securely enthroned. Considered as pure literature, 
it is probably the best book that Curtis ever wrote, 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 351 

^nd its charm is of the kind that does not easily 
fade. In point of style, also, it leaves the artificiali- 
ties of the "Howadji" manner far behind, and 
almost reaches the full maturity of the later Easy 
Chair essays and the great orations. 

IV 

It was in 1854 that Curtis succeeded Donald G. 
Mitchell in the occupancy of the Easy Chair, which 
lasted for the thirty-eight remaining years of his life, 
and made him our American Addison — our typical 
essayist in the eighteenth-century meaning of the 
term. It would be difficult to show that the essays 
of the Easy Chair are inferior in literary quality to 
those of the " Spectator," and not at all difficult to 
maintain that they are broader in their range of 
interest, and richer in human sympathy: with respect 
to mere quantity, they greatly outweigh the Addi- 
sonian product. When a man writes several short 
essays a month for nearly two score years, the total 
becomes impressive; Mr. Winter gives twenty-five 
hundred as the approximate number. They dealt 
with most sorts of subjects, with worthies ancient and 
modern, with early impressions and striking con- 
temporary figures and situations, with poets and 
novelists and orators and actors and musicians, with 
every aspect of the social comedy as viewed by the 
most genial of spectators, with all matters that 



352 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

seemed to lend themselves to his purpose of unob- 
trusive didacticism — a purpose so veiled by animated 
and fanciful discourse that the reader was hardly 
conscious of its existence. It is not often that a 
novelist has commanded such an audience as was 
his, or held it for so many years by the persuasive 
power of eloquence. It has been observed that the 
contentious questions of current politics were kept 
outside the Easy Chair's range of vision; its occu- 
pant felt that the platform was his proper place for 
their discussion, and that a heavier equipment than 
playful satire was required for an effective assault 
upon the hosts of political corruption. Three small 
volumes of essays were made up from the Easy Chair 
series at about the time of the author's death (1891- 
1894); several more volumes of equally lasting value 
might easily be gathered together from the same 
source of supply. 

Almost from the time of his return from Europe, 
Curtis had taken up the business of lecturing, and 
was so successful as a platform speaker that engage- 
ments came to him in constantly increasing num- 
bers. In these early years he probably earned more 
by speaking than by writing; this seems to be a fair 
inference from a letter of 1854, in which he says: 
"I mean to lecture during two months and make 
two thousand dollars. I have put my price up to 
fifty dollars." Mr. Godwin says, still writing of the 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 353 

early days of " Putnam's ": "Then, ever and anon, 
Mr. Curtis would be off for a week or two, deliver- 
ing lectures on 'Sir Philip Sidney,' on 'The Genius 
of Dickens,' on 'The Position of Women,' and in one 
case a course of lectures in Boston and in New York 
on 'Contemporary Fiction.' In a galaxy of lecturers 
which included Emerson, Phillips, Beecher, Chapin, 
Henry Giles, and others, he was a bright particular 
star, and everywhere a favorite." He even found 
his way to the West as early as 1853, and in Decem- 
ber of that year wrote to Briggs: "I have seen a 
prairie, I have darted all day across a prairie, I have 
been near the Mississippi, I have been invited to 
Iowa, which lies somewhere over the western hori- 
zon. I feel as all the people feel in novels, — I con- 
fess the West! Great it is and greatly to be praised." 
As for Detroit, that city "has drifted into the East," 
he says. The discovery that the United States is not 
bounded by the Alleghanies has been made by nu- 
merous later explorers, but Curtis was one of the 
first to announce it. 

A month later, we find him lecturing in Boston, 
and humorously describing himself as "a being who 
nightly vomits fire and ribbons for the satisfaction 
of gaping multitudes, who is taken to balls, and 
rushes into small fishing towns to fascinate the 
alewives — who betakes himself with his rush-light to 
illuminate small villages whereunto gas has never 



354 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

been previously brought.'' Later in the year he fore- 
gathered with Longfellow and Lowell in Cambridge, 
incidentally preparing an article on Craigie House 
for the "Homes of American Authors." Then came 
three or four summer and fall months at Newport, 
"my country, where my airiest castles are built and 
my fairest estates lie." The following extracts are 
from letters written to Briggs from Newport. "My 
young friend Curtis is here, immensely tickled to see 
his sentimental phiz in Putnam, and struggling with 
a poem! All the fools are not dead yet, it seems. 
But I, who have lived a lie for thirty years, — I, whose 
life was a riper romance than the most imaginative 
of these idiots can invent, — must laugh at that 
simple ass, Curtis, ' who is actually screwing out a 
poem in the regular old heroic style.' " "Time goes 
I know not where, I care not how. Upon cool morn- 
ing piazzas I sit talking with the Muses, in warm 
evening parlors I rush dancing with the Graces. 
There are no end of pretty women. At the Bellevue 
dance on Monday I saw more really lovely girls than 
often fall to the lot of anybody's less than a sultan's 
eyes." "I am going to church, because I shall hear 
a man of earnest and solemn feeling chant a kind of 
religious reverie which his congregation loves, but I 
am sure do not understand. The people also, look 
calm and pious, there is not too strong a sense of 
millinery." 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 355 

One of these passages contains the suggestion that 
Curtis sometimes indulged in verse-making. We are 
not apt to think of him as a poet, but he wrote a good 
deal of verse in his earlier years, was occasionally 
the poet of a college commencement, and once went 
so far as to propose to Dwight that they join company 
in a volume of poetry. The examples that have been 
preserved reveal a vein of delicate sentiment, simply 
and sincerely expressed in terms obviously imitative 
of old-fashioned models. 

"Sing the song that once you sung, 
When we were together young, 
When there were but you and I 
Underneath the summer sky. 

"Sing the song, and o'er and o'er — 
But I know that nevermore 
Will it be that song you sung 
When we were together young." 

An acceptable minor strain, but we cannot regret that 
he devoted his talents to the tasks of prose for which 
they were much better fitted. 

At the time of an earlier visit to Newport in 1852, 
Curtis became engaged to be married, and announced 
the fact in a rapturous letter to Dwight. But this 
arrangement came to naught, and it was not until 
three years later that he made the engagement that re- 
sulted in the happiest of unions. The young woman 



356 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

in question was Miss Anna Shaw, of Staten Island, 
whose brother was Robert Gould Shaw, who died 
leading his negro soldiers in the charge at Fort Wag- 
ner, and whose sister was Josephine Shaw, who be- 
came the wife of Charles Russell Lowell, and, after 
her husband's death at Cedar Creek, gave her many 
remaining years to helpful philanthropic endeavor. 
The Shaws had been friends of Curtis in the Brook 
Farm days ; they were not members of the commu- 
nity, but they had lived near by, and the children 
had played and studied there. The wedding took 
place on Thanksgiving Day, 1856, and among the 
guests was John C. Fremont, defeated just before in 
the Presidential campaign, whose candidacy Curtis 
had stoutly championed, and whose defeat was but 
the presage of imminent victory for the cause of hu- 
man freedom. 

The year of his happiness had also brought to 
Curtis his first great grief. His father died early in 
1856. How the son felt toward him may be seen 
from a letter to his mother written soon afterward. 
"You may imagine how strange and sad it is not to 
feel father's interest and anxiety in my success. I 
used to read everything that was said about me with 
his eyes, and so gladly sent him all the praise. . . . 
How just and calm and generous a friend my father 
was to me ! He was so candid and simple in his love 
that I never ceased to feel myself a boy when I was 






GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 357 

with him." Another occurrence of the same year 
was destined to have important consequences in 
Curtis's life. The ownership of " Putnam's" passed 
into new hands, and Curtis became a partner in the 
publishing firm, which soon thereafter failed. He 
not only lost all his investment, but assumed a heavy 
indebtedness that could not legally have been fixed 
upon him. He unflinchingly set to work to discharge 
the obligation, and lived with strict economy until 
the last dollar was paid. It was a task of sixteen 
years; they should have been the best years of his life, 
and perhaps they were, for all their privations and 
sacrifices, since they put to one of the severest of tests 
a character that could rise to meet it, and gave to the 
world an example of honorable dealing that may have 
been more fruitful than any eloquence of spoken or 
written word. 



This year 1856, if any may be so considered, was 
the turning-point in Curtis's life. He was thirty-two 
years old ; he had an established social position, and 
a wide reputation as journalist, lecturer, and author. 
He had experienced the ministry of sorrow, and was 
about to be tempered by an unexpected responsi- 
bility. He had, moreover, become associated by 
his marriage with a family that was already marked 
by its interest in the public welfare and its devotion 



358 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

to high impersonal aims. This new atmosphere of 
strenuous idealism acted as a tonic influence upon 
his character, and aroused him to the full conscious- 
ness of his powers. His dreams became tinged with 
prophetic coloring, and his utterance, losing nothing 
of its suavity and charm, became informed with a 
new note of virility. Forsaking the paths of dalliance, 
like the youth of the " Songs before Sunrise," 

"Then he stood up, and trod to dust 
Fear and desire, mistrust and trust, 

And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet, 

And bound for sandals on his feet 
Knowledge and patience of what must 

And what things may be, in the heat 
And cold of years that rot and rust 

And alter; and his spirit's meat 
Was freedom, and his staff was wrought 
Of strength, and his cloak woven of thought." 

Of the influence of the Shaws in working this regener- 
ation, Mr. Cary says: "The father and mother of 
the woman who was to be his wife were of the early 
school of intensely earnest, unflinching, uncompromis- 
ing, unwearying foes of slavery. It was a part of 
their religion to fight the evil at all times and in all 
ways that offered or could be found, and it is certain 
that, if the flame of his zeal was not kindled, it was 
nursed and fanned by theirs. " 

Curtis had returned from Europe in the year of the 
Compromise which it was fatuously hoped would 






GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 359 

reconcile all antagonisms, and remove the question 
of slavery from national politics. Clay and Webster 
had joined in its acceptance, and under their leader- 
ship, men of both sections were crying "Peace!" 
when it was perfectly clear to the moral vision that 
there could be no peace. For no sooner did the terms 
of the Compromise go into effect than the galling 
nature of its fugitive-slave provision became evident, 
and indignation flamed anew. We have already seen 
what Curtis thought of that even in his days of lotus- 
eating. Then, in 1854, arose the vicious doctrine of 
popular sovereignty, and the successful attempt to 
open the Kansas-Nebraska territory to slavery under 
the protection of that specious plea. Then came the 
dastardly assault upon Sumner in the Senate chamber, 
and then the long agony of " bleeding Kansas." 
The. slavery power was now showing its hand, and 
for Curtis the psychological crisis had arrived. It 
was a new-born Curtis who on August 5, 1856, stood 
on the platform of Wesleyan University and addressed 
his student audience, in words that were heard far 
beyond those walls, on "The Duty of the American 
Scholar to Politics and the Times." This was no 
lyceum performance, but a trumpet-call to action, 
and many a generous soul responded to its appeal. 
A few characteristic passages of this address may 
be given. A young man speaking to young men, 
Curtis at once placed himself in touch with his hear- 



360 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

ers. "Too young to be your guide and philosopher, 
I am yet old enough to be your friend. Too little in 
advance of you in the great battle of life to teach you 
from experience, I am yet old enough to share with 
you the profit of the experience of other men and of 
history. ... I would gladly speak to you of the 
charms of pure scholarship; of the dignity and worth 
of the scholar; of the abstract relation of the scholar 
to the state. The sweet air we breathe and the repose 
of midsummer invite a calm ethical or intellectual 
discourse. But would you have counted him a friend 
of Greece who quietly discussed the abstract nature 
of patriotism on that Greek summer day through 
whose hopeless and immortal hours Leonidas and 
his three hundred stood at Thermopylae for liberty? 
And to-day, as the scholar meditates that deed, the 
air that steals in at his window darkens his study and 
suffocates him as he reads. Drifting across a conti- 
nent, and blighting the harvests that gild it with 
plenty from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, a black 
cloud obscures the page that records an old crime, 
and compels him to know that freedom always has 
its Thermopylae, and that his Thermopylae is called 
Kansas. . . . There has been but one great cause 
in human affairs— the cause of liberty. In a thousand 
forms, under a thousand names, the old contest has 
been waged. It divided the politics of Greece and 
Rome, of England, France, America, into two parties 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 361 

so that the history of liberty is the history of the 
world.' ' The substance of the oration is a review of 
the strengthening of the slave power, beginning with 
its intrenchments in the Constitution, and ending 
with an account of "the Kansas iniquity.' ' Then, 
evoking memories of the Revolutionary heroes, the 
speaker made a sharp application of this lesson to 
the burning question of the present. "And yet no 
victim of those days, sleeping under the green sod of 
Connecticut, is more truly a martyr of liberty than 
every murdered man whose bones lie bleaching in 
this summer sun upon the silent plains of Kansas." 
By these steps we approach the peroration. "The 
voice of our brothers who are bleeding, no less than 
of our fathers who bled, summons us to this battle. 
Shall the children of unborn generations, clustering 
over that vast western empire, rise up and call us 
blessed or cursed? Here are our Marathon and 
Lexington; here are our heroic fields. The hearts of 
all good men beat with us. The fight is fierce — the 
issue is with God. But God is good." The speech 
thus summarized found a wide circulation through 
the New York "Tribune" and in pamphlet form. 
It helped, says C. E. Norton, "to define the political 
ideals, and confirm the political principles of the 
educated youth of the land." 

In the fall of 1856, the new Republican party had 
completed its national organization, and entered the 



362 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

field with John C. Fremont for its presidential candi- 
date, and a large body of aspirants for Congress and 
for the offices of the state governments in the North. 
Curtis took an active part in the campaign, making 
many speeches for the Republican cause in Penn- 
sylvania (then an October state), and afterward in 
Connecticut and New York. He hardly expected 
success in the election of that year, but was highly 
hopeful for the future. Writing to a friend in the 
lull between campaign and election, he said, "The 
election is but an event. God is still God, however 
the election goes and whoever is elected. The move- 
ment which is now fairly begun will not relapse into 
apathy or death." 

The next four years were devoted mainly to lectur- 
ing and political activity. Curtis made his home 
with the Shaws, on Staten Island, and there his first 
child, a son, was born in December, 1857. But he 
knew less than most men of the joys of home during 
these busy years, for his duties called him elsewhere 
for a considerable part of the time. He worked hard 
for the Republicans in the campaign of 1858, and 
when it was over, and their governor was elected in 
New York, he started on a lecture tour, for which no 
less than sixty evenings were engaged. In the sum- 
mer of 1857, he had followed his first great oration by 
a second, on " Patriotism," in which he had reaffirmed 
his belief that it was the duty of every good citizen 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 363 

to disobey the fugitive slave law. "If the law of the 
land, enacted by the majority, declares that you must 
murder your child under two years of age, or prosti- 
tute your daughter, or deny a cup of water to the 
thirsty, or return to savage Indians an innocent cap- 
tive flying for his life whom they had stolen from his 
country and enslaved for their own gain, under the 
name of civilizing him, you have no right to obey, be- 
cause such laws nullify themselves, being repulsive 
to the holiest human instincts, and obedience would 
produce a more disastrous public demoralization 
than any possible revolution could breed." 

The two orations thus far mentioned were deliv- 
ered under peaceful academic auspices, before edu- 
cational institutions. The third, a public address of 
1859, given in Brooklyn and Boston, and afterwards 
in Philadelphia, had a more dramatic setting. It was 
upon "The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question,' ' 
and was delivered at the time when John Brown's 
trial and execution had so inflamed the public mind 
that sober judgment was impossible. In Brooklyn 
and Boston the address found audiences in general 
sympathy with the speaker, but the case was different 
in the City of Brotherly Love. The pro-slavery sen- 
timent was very strong in that community, which 
owed much of its prosperity to trade with the South, 
and the opening of a fair on December 12 by the 
Philadelphia Female Antislavery Society was regarded 



364 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

as a highly offensive proceeding. Curtis's lecture 
(which had been arranged for several months before) 
was appointed for the 15th, and a determined effort 
was made to prevent its being given. On the morn- 
ing of that day, one of the leading newspapers pub- 
lished a call, signed "Many Citizens, " urging an 
evening rally in front of the lecture hall, of "all who 
are determined that no more hireling incendiaries 
shall be permitted to make their inflammatory 
addresses in our loyal city." The hall in question 
was the upper part of a building of which the lower 
story was used as a warehouse, into which freight 
cars were run for unloading. 

Curtis had the support of the local authorities, 
although neither mayor nor chief of police shared 
his opinions, and the hall was well guarded by officers. 
He came to the place of meeting accompanied by a 
body-guard of men and women well known for their 
antislavery sympathies, and went up to the platform, 
the approaches to which were forthwith blocked by 
piles of benches. A policeman sat at the end of 
every seat in the hall, and several hundred were 
stationed downstairs. Curtis was introduced, and 
rioting began at once. Those within attempted to 
storm the stage, and the mob without threw stones 
and bottles of vitriol through the windows. There 
was a fierce struggle in the warehouse below, and the 
chief of police, finding his prisoners too numerous to 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 365 

be sent away to the station, had them locked up in 
the empty cars standing in the building. Then 
followed attempts to set fire to the hall, whereupon 
the chief announced that in case the building should 
be burned, the audience would be taken care of, but 
no particular effort made to save the carloads of 
imprisoned rioters. Meanwhile Curtis, availing him- 
self of occasional intervals of comparative quiet, 
went on with his address to the end. "When I could 
hear him," reports one of those present, "his voice 
was firm and clear and resonant, and his delivery 
sustained and self-possessed." Thus was the right 
of free speech maintained in Philadelphia, and thus 
did Curtis experience his "baptism of fire" in the 
sacred cause to which he had given himself. By way 
of anticlimax, it should be recorded that a year later, 
when he was engaged for a purely literary address 
in the same city, the mayor and the owner of the hall 
refused to allow him to appear. " It seems that I 
am such a dangerous fellow," he wrote, "that no hall 
owner in Philadelphia will risk the result of my 
explosive words, and not a place can be had for my 
fanatical and incendiary criticism of Thackeray." 

One more excursion into literature proper was to 
be made before Curtis, following the example of his 
great prototype Milton, threw himself wholly into 
public affairs. In 1859, he was prevailed upon to 
write a novel for serial publication in "Harper's 



366 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Weekly." " Trumps " (published in book form in 
1861) was the result, but the sixth and last book of 
the author must be described as relatively a failure. 
He knew what was good in fiction, but had not him- 
self the novelist's creative power. In " Trumps" he 
remained an essayist, and was more obtrusively a 
moralist — a dispenser of rewards and punishments — 
than the canons of the art of fiction allow. The book 
was lacking in vitality and in dramatic action; what 
merits it possessed as a novel were but a pale reflec- 
tion of the work of stronger writers. 

As events shaped themselves for the political crisis 
of i860, Curtis was all the time actively at work. He 
held important positions in the local Republican 
organizations, and was appointed a delegate to the 
National Convention at Chicago. He went as a 
supporter of Seward, whom he believed to be the 
logical candidate of his party, but when the gather- 
ing in the " Wigwam" was stampeded for Lincoln, 
he did not sulk in his tent, but acquiesced, although 
with misgivings, in the nomination, and flung him- 
self eagerly into the campaign that followed. In 
making the platform of the Convention, he showed 
his independence by turning upon his associates in 
the New York delegation, and supporting, against 
the professional politicians, the more advanced 
doctrine of the antislavery leaders. Giddings had 
moved to make the immortal words of the preamble 






GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 367 

to the Declaration of Independence a part of the 
platform, but the motion had been lost, and its maker 
had turned to leave the hall. It seemed to Curtis, as 
he afterwards said, "that the spirits of all the martyrs 
to freedom were marching out of the convention 
behind the venerable form of that indignant and 
outraged old man." The scene that followed when 
Curtis rose to renew the amendment that had just 
suffered defeat is thus described by an eye-witness: 
" Folding his arms, he calmly faced the uproarious 
mass and waited. The spectacle of a man who 
wouldn't be put down at length so far amused the 
delegates that they stopped to look at him. ' Gentle- 
men/ rang out that musical voice in tones of calm 
intensity, 'this is the convention of free speech, and 
I have been given the floor. I have only a few words 
to say to you, but I shall say them, if I stand here 
until tomorrow morning. ' Again the tumult threat- 
ened the roof of the 'Wigwam,' and again the 
speaker waited. His pluck and the chairman's gavel 
soon gave him another chance. Skilfully changing the 
amendment to make it in order, he spoke as with a 
tongue of fire in its support, daring the representatives 
of the party of freedom, meeting on the borders of the 
free prairies in a hall dedicated to the advancement 
of liberty, to reject the doctrine of the Declaration 
of Independence affirming the equality and defining 
the rights of man. The speech fell like a spark 



368 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

upon tinder, and the amendment was adopted with 
a shout of enthusiasm more unanimous and deafen- 
ing than the yell with which it had been previously 
rejected." Thus it was that the platform of Lincoln 
was saved from the stain of a cowardly evasion of 
principle. Some two or three years afterward, lec- 
turing on the same theme, he heard one of his au- 
ditors remark: "He is a very dangerous man, he 
puts it so plausibly!" Commenting upon the inci- 
dent in a letter, he said: "An American says so of 
the doctrine of the Declaration! You see there is 
work before us." 

VI 

It need hardly be said in so many words that 
Curtis was a loyal supporter of the Union cause 
throughout the Civil War. He believed that it was 
possible (as the event proved) to save the Union and 
to end slavery, and the stoutness of his faith stands 
in favorable contrast with the half-heartedness or the 
imperfect vision of those who despaired of accom- 
plishing both ends. After the ordinances of secession, 
whereby a group of the Southern states sought to 
resume the sovereignty which they had abdicated in 
making the constitutional compact, he still hoped 
for a solution of the difficulty without resort to arms, 
and applauded the temper of Seward's speech in the 
Senate (January, 1861), which advocated every 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 369 

concession that was possible short of an abandon- 
ment of fundamental principle. "No government 
does wisely which, however lawful, moderate, hon- 
est, and constitutional, treats any popular complaint, 
however foolish, unnecessary, and unjustifiable, with 
haughty disdain." But compromise became out of 
the question after the eventful April days that saw 
the fall of Fort Sumter and the bloodshed of Northern 
men. He wrote to Norton: "I think of the Mas- 
sachusetts boys dead. 'Send them home tenderly,' 
says your governor. Yes, 'tenderly, tenderly, but 
for every hair of their bright young heads brought 
low, God, by our right arms, shall enter into judg- 
ment with traitors! ' " 

Curtis was not without an eye for the mistakes 
made by the President in those trying times, but he 
did not join in the impatient demand for more vigor- 
ous action. "I believe with all my heart in the cause, 
and in Abe Lincoln. His message is the most truly 
American message ever delivered. Think upon 
what a millenial year we have fallen when the Presi- 
dent of the United States declares officially that this 
government is founded upon the rights of man! 
Wonderfully acute, simple, sagacious, and of antique 
honesty! I can forgive the jokes and the big hands, 
and the inability to make bows." In March, 1862, 
he writes: "I have faith in the President's common 
sense and practical wisdom. His policy has been 



370 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

to hold the border states. He has held them; now 
he takes his next step and invites emancipation. 
I think he has the instinct of the statesman, — the 
knowledge of how much is practicable without recoil. 
From the first he has steadily advanced, and there 
has been no protest against anything he has said or 
done." And in September, when the Emancipation 
Proclamation was announced: " Coming at this 
moment, when we were in the gravest peril from 
Northern treachery, the proclamation clears the air 
like a northwest wind. We know now exactly where 
we are. There are now none but slavery and anti- 
slavery men in the country. The fence is knocked 
over, and straddling is impossible." 

Turning for a moment to glance at Curtis's private 
and domestic concerns, we note that his second child, 
a girl, was born just after the attack on Fort Sumter. 
His two younger brothers enlisted as soldiers, and 
one of them, Joseph Bridgham Curtis, who had won 
the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel at the age of twenty- 
six, was killed at the head of his men, December 12, 
1862. The draft riots in New York, in July, 1863, 
brought Curtis a suggestion of personal peril. He 
was told of a projected raid upon his Staten Island 
house, for the purpose of capturing Horace Greeley 
and Wendell Phillips, whom rumor reported to be 
concealed there. "I took the babies out of bed and 
departed to an unsuspected neighbor's. On Wednes- 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 371 

day a dozen persons informed me and Mr. Shaw 
that our houses were to be burned ; and as there was 
no police or military force upon the island, and my 
only defensive weapon was a large family umbrella, 
I carried Anna and the two babies to James Sturgis's 
in Roxbury." 

All this time Curtis was busy with tongue and pen, 
serving his country, and at the same time working 
to lessen the burden of the old debt. His most 
important address of this period was "The American 
Doctrine of Liberty," first given at Harvard as a 
Phi Beta Kappa oration, and repeated some forty 
times during the next twelve months. "In every 
free nation," he said, "the public safety and progress 
require a double allegiance — to the form and to the 
spirit of the government. By forgetting the spirit 
of our own, we have imperilled both its form and its 
existence." In 1863, he assumed the political editor- 
ship of "Harper's Weekly," then the most influential 
paper of its kind in the country. He had long written 
for the paper as "The Lounger," and had contributed 
to it his only novel. But his new work was of a very 
different character, and was destined to shape public 
opinion in the right direction for many years to come, 
since the connection now made was continued to the 
end of his life, and was interpreted so seriously that 
the editorial page was always largely, and for a 
number of years wholly, the work of his pen. In this 



372 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

editorial capacity, he developed a new individual 
style, plainer than that which served him for other 
purposes. It was a persuasive style that kept the 
average person constantly in mind, that set forth its 
reasonings in the simplest manner, and was altogether 
free from the irritating assumption of superiority 
that is sometimes made to alienate the best-disposed 
of readers from the best of causes. Unlike Lowell 
and Godkin, who during the same years were work- 
ing editorially for the same ends, he could be patient 
with stupidity, and so gently could 

" The Wrong expose 
As sometimes to make converts, never foes." 

As the time approached for the presidential election 
of 1864, Curtis could not altogether escape the mood 
of despondency that prevailed during that critical 
year. The repulse of the invading Confederates at 
Gettysburg and the capture of Vicksburg the year 
before had made the Union triumph a foregone con- 
clusion, but the conflict seemed despairingly long, 
and the administration had to contend with scheming 
politicians as well as with a foe in arms. Curtis was 
again a delegate to the Republican National Con- 
vention, and wrote the official letter notifying Lincoln 
of his renomination. Curtis was himself nominated 
for Congress in that year, and, although he did not 
expect to be elected (and was not), welcomed the 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 373 

opportunity for campaigning, and spoke daily or 
ofteiier, for some six weeks, but more for Lincoln 
than for himself. When the election was over, he 
heaved a sigh of thanksgiving. He wrote to Norton : 
"Let us thank God and the people for this crowning 
mercy. I did not know how my mind and heart were 
strained until I felt myself sinking in the great waters 
of the triumph. We knew it ought to be; we knew 
that, bad as we have been, we did not deserve to be 
put out like a mean candle in its own refuse; but it 
is never day until the dawn." 

He speaks in this same letter of having "prepared 
a very small sermon upon Political Infidelity.' ' This 
was given as a lecture in about fifty places during the 
closing months of the war. That "absolute freedom 
of speech is the test of political fidelity in a free gov- 
ernment" was its text, and its substance was a search- 
ing examination of the American conscience, showing 
that the sufferings of the nation had been the inevi- 
table outcome of its unwillingness to discuss the evil 
of slavery in open and untrammelled debate. "It is 
not the impracticability of popular principles, but 
the infidelity to them of educated men, which has 
plunged the country into war." But the end of the 
long agony was now at hand, an end whose exulta- 
tion was to be so tragically sobered a few days later. 
How the death of Lincoln affected Curtis may be 
read in the pages of "Harper's Weekly," and still 



374 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

more clearly in these solemn and touching words from 
his private correspondence. " Tonight, in the misty 
spring moonlight, as I think of the man we all loved 
and honored, laid quietly to rest upon the prairie, I 
feel that I cannot honor too much, or praise too 
highly, the people that he so truly represented, and 
which, like him, has been faithful to the end. So 
spotless he was, so patient, so tender, — it is a selfish 
sad delight to me now, as when I looked upon his 
coffin, that his patience had made me patient, and 
that I never doubted his heart, or head, or hand. At 
the only interview I ever had with him, he shook my 
hand paternally at parting, and said, ' Don't be trou- 
bled, I guess we shall get through.' We have got 
through, at least the fighting, and still I cannot be- 
lieve it. Here upon the mantel are the portraits of 
the three boys who went out of this room, my brother, 
Theodore Winthrop, and Robbie Shaw. They are all 
dead — the brave darlings — and now I put the head 
of the dear Chief among them, I feel that every drop 
of my blood and thought of my mind and affection 
of my heart is consecrated to securing the work made 
holy and forever imperative by so untold a sacri- 
fice." 

What that silent vow of consecration meant to 
Curtis is revealed in every act of his life from that 
time on. Problems almost as grave as those of armed 
rebellion were yet to confront the nation, a fact which 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 375 

none realized better than he, and he exhibited in 
handling them the old manful resolution and sincerity 
of disinterested purpose. The conflicts in which he 
henceforth engaged were no longer spectacular, but 
their issue was as vital to the national well-being as 
was the outcome of the war itself. The editorial page 
of "Harper's Weekly" remained the vantage-ground 
upon which he fought, but he frequently sallied forth 
into the forum, and took an active part in the councils 
of the men in whose hands lay the direction of affairs. 
As early as 1864 he had been elected a member of the 
Board of Regents of the University of the State of 
New York. This office seemed of little importance 
to him in the earlier years, but its consequence was 
afterwards greatly enlarged, and it gave him an oppor- 
tunity for much useful and effective work toward the 
close of his life. It should be explained that in this 
case the term " University " is used in the French 
sense, and means, not a single institution of learn- 
ing, but the entire state system of public educa- 
tion, over which the Regents exercise a general 
control. 

In the later 'sixties, however, his more immediate 
concerns were with political matters. The Constitu- 
tion of New York needed revision, and Curtis was 
chosen a delegate to the Convention called for that 
purpose. He accepted the call, although it meant 
nearly a year of additional hard work, and the sacri- 



376 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

fice of a much-needed summer vacation. The Con- 
vention, held in 1867-1868, was an able body of men, 
and its work was very thoroughly done. Curtis 
stood, among other things, for a unification of edu- 
cational authority, for the filling of more offices by 
appointment and fewer by election, for state control 
over the police system, for the sale of liquor as a 
legitimate business, and for woman suffrage. In 
support of the last-named cause he was particularly 
eloquent, and he made a stout fight for it, although 
it was foredoomed to defeat. In the same year 
(1867) he was asked to join in a trade for the election 
of a United States senator, and combine with another 
candidate against Conkling, but this he naturally 
refused with indignation. In 1869, he was nominated 
for the office of Secretary of State of New York. 
The honor was bestowed by acclamation, and it 
greatly moved him to receive "such a spontaneous 
summons from one of the best conventions we ever 
had, and whose platform was without evasion, and 
noble." But he felt that he must decline the offer 
in justice to both his family and himself. In 1870 
he acted as chairman of the State Convention, hoping 
that he might do something to soften the factional 
differences that were just then demoralizing the 
Republican party. He was asked to stand for the 
governorship, and consented, to discover afterwards 
that he had been tricked, that his name had been 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 377 

injected into the discussion for the sole purpose of 
defeating the candidacy of Horace Greeley. He was 
bitterly hurt at this treatment, and never again would 
he permit his name to be bandied about in a nominat- 
ing convention. 

During these years, the great problem of national 
politics had been that of the reconstruction of the 
states lately in rebellion. In the protracted dispute 
between Congress and the President, Curtis supported 
the authority of the former, and even approved of 
the attempt to remove Johnson from office by im- 
peachment proceedings. But when those proceed- 
ings failed, and the vote for conviction fell just one 
senator short of the required two-thirds majority, 
Curtis warmly defended the little band of Republican 
senators who had voted according to the dictates of 
conscience, and not at the party behest. He wrote to 
a friend : " To say that a senator who thinks his oath 
means what it states and who acts accordingly is 
infamous, is not criticism; it is an effort to destroy 
liberty of thought and speech by terrorism. I think, 
as it happens, although I should have voted to con- 
vict, that the party is infinitely stronger and surer of 
success since the failure of impeachment. I feared a 
few weeks ago that we were to be saved by the folly of 
our foes. But I see now that we have the conscience 
as well as the ardor of youth." Not many Republi- 
cans could then share with him this tolerant spirit. 



378 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

VII 

In one important respect, he could not approve 
of the conduct of the Republican Senate in this 
crisis. The use of its constitutional authority to 
confirm presidential nominations for the purpose of 
thwarting or coercing the executive, seemed to 
Curtis a gross abuse of power, and the mischievous 
device known then and still known as "the courtesy 
of the Senate" was clearly seen by him to be a means 
of nullifying the appointing power as defined by the 
Constitution, and to offer the gravest menace to 
honest government. It was a new phase of that form 
of organized and even legalized corruption known as 
the spoils system which had even then been preying 
upon our civic vitality for forty years, and which was 
the monster to whose destruction Curtis was to give 
the largest share of his remaining energies. That 
abominable system of office-mongering had become 
firmly entrenched in our administrative procedure 
since the time when it was introduced by Andrew 
Jackson. Sophistries were piled mountain-high in 
its defense, and even the impudent claim of American- 
ism was made for a system that flouted the very idea 
of equal opportunity for all which was supposed to 
be the foundation of the American government. 
That we might learn to get along without it seemed 
the veriest counsel of perfection, and those who spoke 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 379 

of dislodging it from its place of advantage were 
derided as visionaries by the whole body of practical 
politicians. 

This was the evil with which Curtis now sought 
to cope. 

" Before the monstrous wrong he set him down — 
One man against a stone-walled city of sin." 

He did not long remain alone, for some of the noblest 
spirits of the time rallied to the new crusade, but as 
long as he lived he was recognized and loyally 
supported as the leader of the reform. The first 
practical steps were taken during Grant's first term, 
the way having been in some measure prepared by 
the two elaborate reports that had been submitted 
to Congress in 1 867-1 868 by a committee headed by 
Thomas A. Jenckes. In 187 1, the President was 
given by Congress certain very limited powers in 
the matter, and immediately appointed a Civil Ser- 
vice Commission of seven members, of which Cur- 
tis at once became chairman. The first report of 
the Commission was made December 18, 1871, was 
at once, together with the rules recommended, ap- 
proved by the President, and sent to Congress with 
a special message. In April, 1872, a second report 
with additional rules, was made and put in force, and 
the reform was fairly inaugurated. But in the ses- 
sion of 1875-1876, Congress refused an appropriation 



380 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

for the work, and the President, weakly yielding to 
the politicians, suspended the operation of the rules. 
Curtis, a year before, feeling that the usefulness of 
the Commission was for the present at an end, had 
sent in his resignation, and gone back to his work 
for "Harper's Weekly," on the whole not discouraged 
at what had been accomplished. 

Toward the close of Grant's first term, his many 
acts of mistaken judgment, and the scandals that had 
become attached to his administration, led to the 
factional movement which in 1872 nominated Greeley 
as a Liberal Republican for the presidency. Curtis, 
although he recognized the evils that led to the revolt, 
could not support it, for he did not feel that its candi- 
date was altogether to be trusted, and his faith in 
Grant's good intentions and personal honesty re- 
mained unshaken. History records the failure of 
the movement, Greeley's death, and Grant's decisive 
victory. Before the President's re-inauguration, 
Curtis's health had given way, and he was ordered 
to take a long rest. Writing March 12, 1873, he 
says: "I have put the last feather on my patient 
camel's back, and he is broken down. About four 
weeks ago I came home from a short, hard trip to the 
West, worn out and ill. For a week I fought a fever 
which threatened several bad things, but all the bad 
symptoms have left me except a pudding-head and 
general prostration. I lie on the couch most all day, 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 381 

and am ordered to rest absolutely for six months. . . . 
I shall have to work much more moderately hereafter, 
and am profoundly mortified to have brought myself 
to this pause." In the fall his recovery was fairly 
complete, although he attempted no lecturing for 
that winter. In fact, he gave up lecturing as a 
routine business altogether, for he had at last dis- 
charged the old debt for which his lyceum engage- 
ments had chiefly been made, and his platform 
appearances henceforth were to be consecrated to 
special occasions and events of public significance. 

The first of these greater orations was the eulogy 
upon Sumner, June 9, 1874, before the General 
Court of Massachusetts. The next year he gave the 
centennial oration at Concord. Among his more 
famous personal orations were those upon Burns, 
Wendell Phillips, Bryant, and Lowell. He spoke 
frequently during the series of centennial celebra- 
tions of Revolutionary events, which ended with the 
unveiling of the Washington statue in New York, in 
1883, with Curtis as the orator of the occasion. 
Among his more famous orations may also be men- 
tioned three upon "The Puritan Principle," given 
(1876, 1883, 1885) before the New England Society 
of New York City; "The Public Duty of Educated 
Men," at Union College; "The Leadership of Edu- 
cated Men," at Brown University; and "The Spirit 
and Influence of the Higher Education," at Albany. 



382 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

An account of Curtis's manner as a speaker may be 
quoted from William Winter's memorial tribute. 
"He began with the natural deference of unstudied 
courtesy — serene, propitiatory, irresistibly winning. 
He captured the eye and the ear upon the instant, 
and before he had been speaking for many minutes 
he captured the heart. There was not much action 
in his delivery, — there never was any artifice. His 
gentle tones grew earnest. His fine face became 
illumined. His golden periods flowed with more and 
more of impetuous force, and the climax of their 
perfect music was always exactly identical with the 
climax of their thought. There always was a certain 
culmination of fervent power at which he aimed, and 
after that a gradual subsidence to the previous level 
of gracious serenity. You never felt that you had 
been beguiled by art ; you only felt that you had been 
entranced by nature. " 

In 1876, Curtis again served as a delegate to the 
Republican National Convention, supporting Bristow 
as long as possible and finally voting for Hayes, in 
opposition to the administration element of the party 
under Conkling's leadership. In the difficult situa- 
tion which arose when the election was over, and it 
appeared that there were a number of electoral votes 
in dispute, only one of which was needed to secure 
a victory for the democratic nominee, Curtis coun- 
selled moderation and the adoption of a plan of ac- 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 383 

tion to which both parties should consent, agreeing to 
abide loyally by the outcome. It was a period of the 
angriest political passions which, had they not been 
controlled in time, might easily have led to a second 
civil war. The way out was at last discovered, and 
no man deserves more of the credit than Curtis for 
the fact that reason and good sense prevailed in that 
critical moment. He struck the key-note of the party 
of moderation in his speech before the New England 
Society of New York, December 22, 1876 — the first 
of the speeches upon "The Puritan Principle " above 
referred to. Edward Everett Hale describes the 
circumstances under which this speech was poured 
like oil upon the troubled waters of dissension. 
There were about three hundred guests at the dinner, 
which was held at Delmonico's. They were the 
leaders of public opinion, and nearly every one of 
them had intense convictions in favor of either Hayes 
or Tilden. They were about equally divided in 
sentiment. "Before such an audience Mr. Curtis 
rose to speak. Instantly — as always — he held them 
in rapt attention. It would have been perfectly easy 
for a timid man, or even a person of historic taste, to 
avoid the great subject of the hour. Mr. Curtis 
might have talked well about Brewster and Carver, 
Leyden and Delfthaven, and have left Washington 
and the White House alone. But he was not a timid 
man. He was much more than a man of delicate 



384 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

taste, well trained and elegant. And therefore he 
plunged right into the terrible subject. Terrible is 
the only word. He passed from point to point of its 
intricacies, citing the common sense of the con- 
scientious statesmen of our race; and he came out 
with his expression of his certain confidence that the 
good sense of the sons of such an ancestry would 
devise a tribunal impartial enough and august 
enough to determine the question to the unanimous 
assent of the nation. . . . Those three hundred men 
of mark in New York went home that night, and 
went to their business the next day, to say that a 
court of arbitration must be established to settle 
that controversy. In that moment of Mr. Curtis's 
triumph, as I believe, it was settled. This is certain: 
that from that moment, as every careful reader may 
find to-day, the whole tone of the press of all parties 
in the city of New York expressed the belief which he 
expressed then, and which that assembly of leaders 
approved by their cheers. And from that moment 
to this moment there has been no more talk of civil 
war." 

President Hayes, soon after his inauguration, of- 
fered Curtis the English mission, or any other that 
he might choose. The honor was declined, partly 
because Curtis preferred his " present public duty," 
and partly because he did not feel certain that "a man 
absolutely without legal training of any kind could 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 385 

be a proper minister." Writing to congratulate 
Lowell upon the appointment to Madrid, he said: 
"On every ground, except that you go away, I am 
delighted that you are going. With me the case is 
very different. I happen to be just in the position 
where I can be of infinitely greater service to the good 
old cause, and to the administration that is trying to 
advance it, than I could possibly be abroad." Hayes 
was an enemy of the spoils system, but most of the 
leaders of his party were its friends, and the "good 
old cause" needed all the support it could get. That 
year saw Curtis again a delegate to the Republican 
State Convention, and his advocacy of a resolution 
approving the course of the President with respect 
to the civil service drew from that hardened spoils- 
man, Senator Conkling, a vituperative and vulgar 
personal attack which saddened Curtis, but was 
hardly calculated to shake his purpose. "It was the 
saddest sight I ever knew, that man glaring at me in 
a fury of hate, and storming out his foolish black- 
guardism. I was all pity. I had not thought him 
great, but I had not suspected how small he was." 
Again in 1880, the presidential year found Curtis 
in close touch with the political situation. His 
address of that year on "Machine Politics and the 
Remedy" was made before the organization of 
Independent Republicans, who then held the balance 
of power in the State of New York. Independent 



386 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

voting was the immediate, and the destruction of 
the malign power of patronage the ultimate remedy 
for most of the evils of machine domination. "The 
man who is proud never to have voted anything but 
the whole regular party ticket shows the servility of 
soul which makes despotism possible." "Reform of 
the civil service, by abolishing patronage, effectually 
stops the machine, by compelling it to empty its own 
pockets and not to pick those of the public to pay its 
way." This seems to be one of the rare occasions 
when Curtis mixed his metaphors. In this year, 
Curtis naturally opposed the renomination of Grant, 
and was on the whole pleased when Garfield appeared 
as a "dark horse" in the Convention, and received 
its vote. 

The reform of the civil service had made some 
progress during the term of Hayes, and his successor 
was known to favor it, although doubts were enter- 
tained of his courage and firmness. The New York 
Civil Service Reform Association, which had been 
organized in 1877, but had been somnolent for a 
couple of years, renewed its activities in 1880, with 
Curtis as president. Garfield's assassination left 
forever unsettled the question of what he would have 
done to advance the cause, but the fact that he was 
murdered by a crazed and disappointed office-seeker 
did much to open the eyes of men in general to an 
evil toward which they had hitherto been apathetic. 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 387 

In August, 1881, when the President was lingering 
between life and death, the National Civil Service 
Reform League was organized at Newport, and of 
this organization also Curtis was "the inevitable 
president by common consent." Not much was to 
be expected from President Arthur, who was a spoils- 
man at heart, but even he recognized a growing 
public opinion to the extent of recommending the 
reform to Congress, of signing the Pendleton Act of 
1883, of putting that law into operation in good faith, 
and of naming a competent Commission for its 
administration. Now at last justification seemed to 
be provided for the words spoken at Newport by 
Curtis: "We have laid our hands on the barbaric 
palace of patronage, and begun to write on its walls 
'Mene, mene!' Nor, I believe, will the work end 
till they are laid in the dust." 

The walls outlasted Curtis's day, although they 
were sadly battered before his death, and he was 
permitted to rejoice over the great progress made in 
the work of destruction during Cleveland's first term. 
Every year from 1882 to 1891, inclusive, he was 
present at the annual meeting of the National Civil 
Service Reform League and gave a lengthy address. 
In 1892 only, failing health made it impossible for 
him to undertake the journey (this time to Baltimore) 
and his address was sent to be read by the secretary. 
Thus there are eleven of these addresses in all, and 



388 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

they constitute a highly important section of his writ- 
ings. They review the progress of the reform from 
year to year, sharply criticising the executive when he 
lapses from the path of duty, generously praising him 
when he resists the ravenous demands of the politi- 
cians, and making all the while a fair allowance for 
the inherent weakness of human nature and the al- 
most insuperable difficulties to be overcome in hewing 
strictly to the line of principle. Much yet remains 
to be done, but the reform has been making steady 
progress, with occasional temporary setbacks, for 
over a quarter of a century, and the moral impetus 
given it by Curtis remains one of the active forces 
that keep it going. 

In the fall of 1882, there was a little squall in the 
Harper establishment which led Curtis to resign his 
editorship of the " Weekly." It was a question of 
state politics, and the machine candidate for the gov- 
ernorship was nominated by methods that aroused 
the indignation of the Independent Republicans. 
Curtis protested against it, but an article sent in from 
his country home at Ashfield became so modified in 
printing that it was made to support the objection- 
able candidate. "My article upon Folger's nomi- 
nation," he wrote to Norton, "was perverted and 
made to misrepresent my views, and to make me 
absolutely ridiculous. The blow to me and to the 
good cause is very great and not exactly retrievable. 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 389 

To-day I am thought by every reader of the paper to 
be a futile fool. The thing is so atrocious as to be 
comical.' ' The blunder was promptly rectified as 
far as was possible, by means of a disavowal on the 
part of the publishers, and a personal statement on 
the part of Curtis, who thereupon withdrew his 
resignation, and resumed the work which was con- 
tinued without further interruption until his death. 

VIII 

The Republican National Convention of 1884 was 
held in Chicago, and Curtis was again a delegate, as 
he had been to the Chicago Convention of i860. 
It was clear to him that the salvation of the party had 
now come to depend upon its adoption of the prin- 
ciples of reform which were at last working as a 
leaven in the general public consciousness. Years 
before, he had formulated this pledge for himself and 
those who were of like mind with him: "That we 
will try public and private men by the same moral 
standard, and that no man who directly or indirectly 
connives at corruption or coercion to acquire office or 
retain it, or who prostitutes any opportunity or 
position of public service to his own or another's 
advantage, shall have our countenance or our vote." 
It was in accordance with this pledge that he had 
acted as an Independent Republican in the cam- 



390 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

paigns of his own State two and four years earlier; 
he was now forced to take similar action in the sphere 
of national politics. 

The three candidates whose names figured chiefly 
in the Convention were Arthur, Blaine, and Edmunds, 
and the latter was the only one of the three that 
Curtis could consistently support. Early in the 
proceedings, an attempt was made to shackle the men 
of independent leanings by a resolution binding all 
the delegates to support the nominee, whoever he 
might be. Whereupon Curtis rose and said: "A 
Republican and a free man I came to this Convention, 
and by the grace of God a Republican and a free man 
will I go out of it." The resolution was withdrawn, 
the regular routine was taken up, and Blaine became 
the official standard-bearer of the party. This created 
a situation from which there was no escape for Curtis 
save to break from the party which he held to have 
forfeited its claim to the support of upright men. 
Its nominee was an unblushing spoilsman, a politician 
who had shown himself unscrupulous in his choice 
of means to secure desired ends, and was believed, 
rightly or wrongly, to have made use of public office 
for private gain. Curtis's feelings were thus stated 
in his own words: "I should be recreant to my 
conscience, and I should bitterly disappoint all those 
who are accustomed to look to me, if, after all that I 
have said about political morality, I should now 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 391 

support for the presidency the one man who is most 
repugnant to the political conscience of young 
Republicans." 

Thus was created the defection that removed 
from office the party which had controlled the nat- 
ional government for twenty-four years; thus was 
the power of the independent emphasized, and the 
epithet " mugwump," derisively applied to him and 
proudly accepted, added to the current speech of 
politics. But it was no easy thing for Curtis to 
sever the political ties of a lifetime, or, although he 
had no twinges of conscience, to bear the reproaches 
of friends whose eyes were so blinded by the scales 
of partisanship as to deem his conduct dishonorable. 
He could bear with equanimity the insults heaped 
upon him by lewd fellows of the baser sort, although 
their scurrility was almost beyond belief, but he 
cherished the good opinion of the good men who 
sincerely thought that his course had been ill-advised, 
and could not fail to be saddened by the loss of their 
sympathy, despite his conviction that "a majority 
cannot morally or honorably bind a participant in 
any consultation to support its action if he morally 
disapproves of it." 

In the campaign of 1888, Curtis again advocated 
the election of Cleveland, although the administra- 
tion for the past four years had not measured fully 
up to the standard expected of it by the reformers. 



3Q2 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

A few weeks before the election, he wrote to a West- 
ern correspondent as follows: "Mr. Cleveland has 
resisted much in his party, but not as much as I had 
hoped. But I still regard him as honest and coura- 
geous. Now, as the chief issue of the campaign is the 
method of reducing the revenue, and as I agree with 
Mr. Cleveland's policy and look upon the Republican 
policy as very injurious, and as I see that Mr. Blaine is 
the controlling genius of his party, and that a vote for 
Mr. Harrison is really a vote for Mr. Blaine, the same 
principles that made me vote for the Republican 
candidate formerly induce me to vote for Mr. Cleve- 
land now. ... In the sense in which you use the 
words, I am not an adherent of Mr. Cleveland. 
I have been disappointed in much that he has done, 
and have said so plainly and publicly. I think him 
honest, though often sophisticated, and in the present 
situation support him as the better alternative." 
He had now come fully to realize, as he said later in 
his eulogy on Lowell, that "independence of party 
is much more vitally essential in a republic than 
fidelity to party," and upon this high plane of political 
philosophy he lived and labored for the rest of his life. 
Of that life only a few facts are left to record. 
The work for Harper's continued to the end, the 
work of political leadership in the "Weekly," and 
the more genial work of the essayist in the monthly 
magazine. Aside from this work, he edited in 1889, 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 393 

wisely and tactfully, "The Correspondence of John 
Lothrop Motley" in two large volumes. His last 
public address was the tribute to Lowell, mentioned 
above, given in Brooklyn and New York, February 
and March, 1892: He was made Chancellor of the 
University of the State of New York in 1890, after 
having served as a Regent for over a quarter of a 
century. To this honorary public service he gave 
generously of his time, for he was never content to be 
a figurehead in any undertaking with which his name 
was associated. He was the recipient of many degrees, 
from that bestowed by Brown in 1854 to those 
bestowed by Harvard and Columbia in 1881 and 
1887, respectively. In his city of New York, he was 
a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and an 
early member of the Century Association. In relig- 
ious sympathies he was a Unitarian, occasionally read- 
ing a sermon of Channing or Martineau in a Staten 
Island pulpit, and occupying at times high offices in 
the Unitarian organization. 

In the early 'seventies, Curtis had established a 
summer home, with Norton for a neighbor, in the 
hill town of Ashfield, in northwestern Massachusetts. 
Here also, he recognized to the full the simple 
obligations of good citizenship, and his influence 
upon the life of this remote rural community was 
marked in many beneficent ways. Ashfield was the 
seat of a modest and long-established academy, an 



394 LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

institution which Curtis and Norton did much to 
strengthen. It was their practice every summer to 
hold a sort of civic function in connection with the 
academy, to which guests of national importance 
were invited. The exercises connected with these 
Ashfield dinners were of great interest, and came to 
attract the attention of the entire country. It was at 
Ashfield that he died, at the age of sixty-eight, after a 
long illness that brought much suffering, on the last 
day of August, 1892, and it was in the little Ashfield 
church that his friends gathered to mourn for him. 
"Our tears must fall," said Norton, "that we are to 
see him no more; but our hearts must be glad that 
his memory belongs to us forever, is part of ourselves, 
and will be to us a perpetual help and joy." 

Mr. Edward Cary, to whose biography of Curtis 
the present sketch is deeply indebted, quotes an 
opinion which holds him "the man of all Americans, 
perhaps the man in all the world, who was most 
widely held in affectionate regard, the most lovable 
and loved of all." Speaking in his own person, Mr. 
Cary says: "He had a gift in the nature of genius 
for hospitality and for friendship ; and it was a curious 
evidence of the richness and capacity of his nature 
that, amid strenuous duties and labors that were 
crowding, exacting, and must have been often 
exhausting, he was able, not to find, but to make 
time for such generous social intercourse." Mr. 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 395 

Parke Godwin, the oldest of the friends who sur- 
vived him, said that he "touched life at nearly every 
point at which it is possible for the individual soul to 
put forth its tendrils into the universe," and further 
declared that "an aspiration for excellence, in its 
various forms of justice, truth, goodness, and courtesy, 
ever cast its light before his eyes and ever whispered 
in his ears, as the sea murmurs in the sea-shell of a 
vast beyond which is its proper home. , ' And, Mr. 
William Winter, almost as old a friend, found these 
words for a monody: 

"O 



O my comrade, O my friend, 
If this parting be the end, 

"Yet I hold my life divine 
To have known a soul like thine. 



'And I hush the low lament, 
In submission, penitent. 

'Still the sun is in the skies; 

He sets — but I have seen him rise! 3 



INDEX 



Abolitionists, 224 

Agassiz, Louis, 282 

Alcott, A. B., 15, 19, 22, 188, 203, 

209, 278, 282, 332 
Alcott, Louisa M., 261 
Alhambra, 79, 82-84 
Allston, W., 51, 65 
American literature, 243 
"American Monthly Magazine," 

10 
"Analectic Magazine, " 60 
Arnold, M., 135 
Ashfield, Mass., 282 
Astor, J. J., 93, 118 
"Atlantic Monthly," 28 

Barlow, Joel, 7, 61 

Bartol, C. A., 188 

Beranger, J. P. de, 24 

Birney, J. G., 299 

Blaine, J. G., 390 

Blake, H., 290, 304 

Bonneville, Capt., 96 

Brevoort, H., 66 

Briggs, C. F., 347, 348 

Brisbane, A., 272 

Brook Farm, 5, 17, 22, 211, 277, 

3 2 3-327 
Brown, John, 227, 302, 307-311, 

363 
Brownell, W. C, 39 
Brownson, O. A., 188, 248 
Bryant, W. C, 9, 63, 86, 97 
Bulkeley, P., 181 
Bull, Ole, 329 
Burns, Anthony, 302 
Burr, Aaron, 54-55 
Burroughs, J., 35 



Cabot, E., 238 

California, 232 

Calvert, G. H., 14 

Cape Cod, 291 

Carlyle, T., 29, 173-175, 180,182, 

189, 193, 201, 205, 208, 209, 211, 

218, 235, 280 
Cary, Edward, 322, 349, 394 
Cass, Lewis, 105 
Catskills, 89 
Channing, W. E., 17, 202, 211, 260, 

268, 271, 280, 292, 304, 311 
Channing, W. H., 188, 222, 273, 

277 
Chartist agitation, 218 
Cheney, J. V., 135 
Cherokee Indians, 206 
Chicago, 231 

Cholmondeley, T., 297, 301, 306 
"Christian Union," 36 
Civil Service Reform, 378-381, 

386-388 
Clarke, J. F., 188, 222, 237 
Clemens, S. L., 31 
Cleveland, Grover, 392 
Coleridge, S. T., 173 
Concord, 247, 251 
Concord School of Philosophy, 16 
Conkling, R., 376, 382, 385 
Conway, M. D., 165, 238 
Cooper, J. F., 63, 242, 340 
" Corsair," 12 
Crothers, S. M., 40 
Curtis, George, 356 
Curtis, George W., 29, 21, 37, 278, 

317-395 
Curtis, Mrs. G. W., 356 
Curtis, Henry, 318 

397 



398 



INDEX 



Curtis, James B., 319, 321 
Curtis, Joseph B., 370 

Dana, C. A., 17, 324 

Dana, R. H., 8 

Dartmouth College, 200, 230 

Davidson, M., 103 

Decatur, S., 62 

"Democratic Review," 272 

Detroit, 353 

" Dial," 16, 17, 21, 22, 208, 209- 

211, 263, 266, 267 
Dickens dinner, 105 
Disraeli, B., 237 
Drake, J. R., 63 
Dwight, J. S., 324, 328 
Dwight, T., 7 

Eagleswood community, 299 
Edgewood, 30 
Edwards, J., 5 
Egypt, 235, 342 
Eliot, George, 220 
Emancipation Proclamation, 229 
Emerson, Charles, 153, 157, 179, 

184-185 
Emerson, Edward, 144, 152,169 
Emerson, Edward W.„2i8, 230, 286 
Emerson, Ellen Tucker, 159, 162, 

163 
Emerson, Ellen, 230, 234, 286 
Emerson, Lydia, 183, 285 
Emerson, Mary Moody, 137, 161, 

245 
Emerson, Ralph W., 15, 21, 135- 

240, 262, 278, 284, 285, 295, 322, 

330, 340 
Emerson, Robert, 157 
Emerson, Thomas, 136 
Emerson, Waldo, 190, 207, 264 
Emerson, William (Senior), 136 
Emerson, Mrs. William (Senior), 

222 
Emerson, William (Junior), 148, 

152, i57> 230, 270 
Espartero, J. B., 106, 109 
Essay, The, 3 
Eugenie, Empress, 121 



Everett, A., 77, 84 
Everett, E., 145, 157, 160 
Evolution, 178-179 

Forbes, J. M., 232 

Forbes, W. H., 230 

Fort Sumter, 229 

Foster, Emily, 72 

Francis, C, 188 

Franklin, B., 6 

Fremont, J. C, 356, 362 

Froude, J. A., 234 

Fruitlands, 15, 277 

Fugitive slave law, 225, 226, 227, 

246, 282, 346 
Fuller, H. B., 40 
Fuller, Margaret, 17, 18-25, 188, 

202, 203, 208, 209, 211, 222, 291 
Furness, W. H., 239 

Galena, 221 

Garnett, R., 210 

Giddings, J. R., 366 

Glasgow, University of, 237 

Glenmary, 12 

Godkin, E. L., 372 

Godwin, P., 347, 349, 353, 394 

Goethe, J. W. von, 280, 329 

Gould, B. A., 143 

Greeley, H., 3, 17, 23, 272, 277, 

287, 298, 370, 377, 380 
Greenough, H., 171 

Hale, E. E., 26, 383 

Halleck, F.-G., 63, 94, 96 

Hamilton, Alexander, 50 

Harper's Ferry, 307 

" Harper's Magazine," 347 

"Harper's Weekly," 371, 375, 388 

Hawley, J. R., 30 

Hawthorne, N., 22, 37, 202, 203, 

2 67> 33 x > 33 2 > 340 
Hayes-Tilden election, 383 
Hearn, L., 38 
Hedge, F. H., 161, 188 
Herbert, G., 186 
Higginson, T. W., 18, 20, 22, 27 
Hoar, E. R., 234, 237 
Hoffman, Matilda, 56-57 



INDEX 



399 



Holland, J. G., 32 

Holmes, O. W., 25, 138, 192, 200, 

236, 34o 
" Home Journal," 13 
Hopkinson, F., 6 
Howells, W. D., 37 
Hudson River, 47 
Hunt, Leigh, 341 

Ibsen, H., 204, 223, 310 

Idlewild, 13 

International Copyright, 102-103 

Irving, Ebenezer, 99 

Irving, John T., 117, 119 

Irving, Peter, 47, 57, 64, 69, 76, 79, 

95, 98 # 
Irving, Pierre, 94 
Irving, Sarah, 44 
Irving, Washington, 3, 7, 31, 43- 

134, 34o 
Irving, William (Senior), 44, 56 
Irving, William (Junior), 55, 70 
Isabella, Queen, 106, 109 

Jackson, Andrew, 89, 91, 180 
Jackson, C. T., 183 
James, G. P. R., 122 
James, Henry (Senior), 272 
James, Henry (Junior), 3, 37 
Johnson, Andrew, 377 
Jones, S. A., 283 

Kansas, 359-361 
Knickerbocker, 60 



Landor, W. S., 172 

Lanier, S., 38 

Lincoln, Abraham, 229, 366, 369, 

370, 372, 373, 374 
Longfellow, H. W., 25,238, 240,354 
Louis Philippe, 112 
Lowell, Josephine S., 356 
Lowell, J. R., 13, 25, 29, 192, 230, 

284, 3 J 8, 340, 37 2 , 385 
Lyceum, The, 26, 178, 217, 256 

Mabie, H. W., 36 
McLane, Lewis, 85 
Maine, 294 



Mallock, W. H., 3 

Malthus, T. R., 3 

Marble, Mrs. A. R., 244 

Maria Christina, Queen, 106, 107, 
no 

Marryatt, F., 12 

Martineau, Harriet, 20 

"Massachusetts Quarterly Re- 
view," 218 

Mather, Cotton, 5 

Matthews, Brander, 39 

Mazzini, G., 24, 230 

Mehemet Ali, 343 

Mexican War, 115, 282, 284 

Mill, J. S., 173 

Milwaukee, 221 

Mitchell, D. G., 3, 29, 351 

Mitchell, S., 57 

Mitford, Mary R., 12 

Monad noc, 304, 311 

Montreal, 231, 292 

Moore, Thomas, 69, 70, 105 

Morley, John Viscount, 240, 242 

"Morning Chronicle," 47 

Mugwumps, 391 

Murat, Achille, 159 

Music, 329 

Napoleon L, 48, 62, 63, 69 

Napoleon II., 61 

Napoleon III., 96, 121 

"Nation, The," 28 

Newport, 354 

New York, Constitution, 375 

"New York Mirror," n 

"New York Tribune," 34, 344 

New York, University of, 375, 393 

"North American Review," 28 

Norton, A., 197 

Norton, C. E., 28, 345, 361, 393 

Nullification, 90 

Oregon question, 115 
"Outlook, The," 36 

Panic of 1857, I2 5, 303 

Parker, Theodore, 22, 188, 199, 

211, 218, 230 
Paulding, J. K., 7, 55 



400 



INDEX 



Payne, J. H., 69, 73 

Payne, W. M., 40 

Peabody, Elizabeth, 188 

Percival, J. G., 63 

Perry, B., 40 

Phi Beta Kappa Society, 190, 231, 

37i 
Philadelphia, 363-365 
Phillips, W., 370 
Pirates, 49 

Poe, E. A., 37, 63, 242, 340 
Polis, Joe, 300 
Protective tariff, 333-335 
Prescott, W. H., 99-102, 125 
Putnam, G. H., 119 
Putnam, G. P., 118, 120 
''Putnam's Magazine," 293, 347, 

357 

Quebec, 292 

Repplier, Agnes, 40 

Republican Conventions, 366-367, 

37 2 , 382, 389-39° 
Republican Party, 362 
Ricketson, D., 268, 297 
Ripley, Ezra, 143, 181, 245 
Ripley, George, 16, 188, 208, 

234 
Riverby, 35 
Robinson, Crabb, 220 
Rogers, Samuel, 70, 96, 105, 209 
Roman Republic, 24 
Rome, 337 
Rumford, Count, 3 
Ruskin, J., 29, 280 

Sanborn, F. B., 143, 198, 245, 269, 

298, 3°3, 307 
Sand, George, 24 
St. Augustine, 158 
St. Louis, 221 
St. Peters, 172 
Scott, Sir W., 59, 68, 86 
"Scribner's Magazine," 32 
Secession, 368 
" Select Reviews," 60 
Seward, W. H., 366, 368 



Shaw, R. G., 356 

Sill, E. R., 379 

Simms, W. G., 63 

Slavery, 158, 223, 226, 302, 333, 

359, 363 
Spain, 76 
Sprague, C, 63 
Staten Island, 271, 274 
Stedman, E. C, 32, 237, 340 
Stephen, L., 166 
Stevenson, R. L., 242 
Stoddard, R. H., 32 
Sumner, C, 227 
Sunnyside, 95, 117 
Swinburne, A. C, 172, 358 

Taylor, Bayard, 32, 340 

Thoreau, Helen, 291 

Thoreau, Henry David, 15, 35, 

160, 188, 209, 211, 230, 241-316, 

321 
Thoreau, John (Senior), 243, 244, 

306 
Thoreau, Mrs. John (Senior), 243, 

245 
Thoreau, John (Junior), 254, 255, 

258, 260 
Thoreau, Maria, 244 
Tilton, Theodore, 127 
Transcendentalism, 21, 117, 188 
Trumbull, J., 7 
Tuckerman, H., 14 

Underground railroad, 283 

Van Buren, Martin, 85, 92, 98 
Van Dyke, H., 39 
Verplanck, G., 9 
Very, Jones, 188, 202 
Vieuxtemps, H., 329 
Virginia, University of, 97, 237 

Wachusett, 269 
Ward, Ellen S., 255 
Ware, H., 163, 199 
Warner, C. D., 30, 56 
Washington, George, 45 
Waterville College, 205, 230 



INDEX 



401 



Webster, Daniel, 104, 108, 180, 

225, 226 
Webster, Pelatiah, 5 
Weiss, J., 249 
Wendell, B., 39 
Whipple, E. P., 26 
White, R. G., 32 
Whitman, W., 32, 242, 300, 340 



Whittier, J. G., 226, 340 
Willis, N. P., 10-14 
Winter, W., 34, 345, 382, 395 
Witherspoon, J., 5 
Woodberry, G. E., 39, 135 
Wordsworth, 24, 175, 219 

Young, Brigham, 232 



Xea&fnfl Bmeticans 

A NEW SERIES OF BIOGRAPHIES 
Edited by W. P. Trent 

The notable interest in American Biography has gener- 
ally been met by two widely different classes of publication 
— the biographical dictionaries, and volumes devoted each 
to an individual. The principal notable exception was the 
Sparks Series, but that is largely devoted to persons who, 
the editor apparently thought, had suffered unmerited 
neglect; and it never attempted a comprehensive treatment 
of leading men. There seems room for a series something 
like Sparks, but devoted to individuals in whose lives every- 
body is interested, and systematically arranged. 

Such a one, to be called " Leading Americans," is now 
"begun. It will consist of large i2mo volumes, each 
containing from half a dozen to a score of biographies, 
classified by volumes according to the pursuits of the men 
treated. It will include only those (not living) whose 
names are known to virtually all reading people, and will 
be written by the most capable authors who can be inter- 
ested in the task. Pains will be taken to make the volumes 
interesting and inspiring, no less than reliable and instruc- 
tive. 

The books are designed not so much to recount history, 
as to portray the men who, in their respective departments, 
"have made history. It is intended that in the books, as 
was lately well said of a European series, " the statesmen 
shall not be overshadowed by historical information, or the 
poets by literary criticism"— that the contents shall be biog- 
raphies rather than treatises on the various fields of activ- 
ity in which their subjects gained eminence, or than exposi- 
tions, criticisms or philosophies; and yet it is realized that 
the best biography must contain something of each of the 
others. 

It is not intended to put the books on a plane that will 
make much in them unattractive to any boy of fifteen who 
would care to read biography. 

[over] 



Xeafcing Hmericans (Continued) 

The first three volumes are ready. 
LEADING AMERICAN SOLDIERS 

Washington, Greene, Taylor, Scott, Andrew Jackson, Grant, 
Sherman, Sheridan, McClellan, Meade, Lee, "Stonewall" Jack- 
son, Joseph E. Johnston. By R. M. Johnston, Lecturer in Harvard 
University, Author of "Napoleon," etc. Large i2mo. With thirteen 
portraits. $1,75 ne *- The persons treated will be remembered chiefly as 
soldiers, and as soldiers they are here presented. 

LEADING AMERICAN NOVELISTS 

Charles Brockden Brown, Cooper, Simms, Hawthorne, Mrs. 
Stowe and Bret Harte. By John Erskine, Adjunct Professor in Colum- 
bia University. Large i2mo. With six portraits. #1.75 net. 
LEADING AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

A General Introduction dealing with essay writing in America and 
biographies of Irving, Emerson, Thoreau and George William Curtis. 
By William Morton Payne, Associate Editor of the The Dial. Large i2mo. 
With four portraits. 

The following additional volumes are already arranged for : 

Leading American Men of Science. Benjamin Thompson, Count 
Rumford, by Edwin E. Slosson ; Alexander Wilson, by Witmer Stone ; 
John James Audubon, by Witmer Stone ; Benjamin Silliman, by Daniel 
Coit Gilman ; Joseph Henry, by Simon Newcomb; Louis Agassiz, by 
Charles Frederick Holder; Jeffries Wyman, by Burt G. Wilder ; Asa 
Gray, by John M. Coulter; James Dwight Dana, by William North Rice; 
Spencer Fullerton Baird, by Charles Frederick Holder ; Othniel 
Charles Marsh, by George Bird Grinnell ; Edward Drinker Cope, by 
Marcus Benjamin ; Josiah Willard Gibbs, by Edwin E. Slosson ; Simon 
Newcomb, by Marcus Benjamin ; George Brown Goode, by David Starr 
Jordan ; Henry Augustus Rowland, by Ira Remsen ; William Keith 
Brooks, by E. A. Andrews. Edited by David Starr Jordan, President of 
Leland Stanford University. 

Leading American Lawyers. By Henry C. Merwin, Author of 
"Thomas Jefferson" (Riverside Biographical Series), "Aaron Burr" 
(Beacon Biographies), etc. 

Leading American Poets. By Curtis Hidden Page, Professor of Eng- 
lish Literature in Northwestern University. 

Leading American Statesmen. By John Spencer Bassett, Professor 
of History in Smith College. 

Leading American Editors. By Frank W. Scott, Assistant Professor 
in the University of Illinois. 

Leading American Explorers. By Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, Secre- 
tary of the American Geographical Society and author of "The Romance 
of the Colorado River," etc. 

Leading American Inventors. By George lies, author of "Flame, 
Electricity and the Camera," "Inventors at Work — with Chapters on 
Discovery," etc. 

Biographies of Leading American Actors, Artists, Historians, Engi- 
neers, Naval Commanders, Philanthropists and others will, with the favor 
of the public, soon be announced. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

Publishers DV er New York 



"THE RETURN OF THE ESSAY" 

MISS ZEPHINE HUMPHREY'S OVER AGAINST 
GREEN PEAK 

A humorous, homely and poetic account of New England 
country life. $1.25 net. 

" Describes with sympathetic spirit the tasks and the pleasures of life 
there, and emphasizes the high aims to which one may reach even though 
the city be far away."— Boston Transcript. 

" The book has a fine wholesome atmosphere and its last chapter is pure 
poetry."— Miss Ellen Burns Sherman, author of "Words to the Wise— and 
Others." 

"Verily it is a delicious piece of work and that last chapter is a genuine 
poem. Best of all is the charming sincerity of the book."— George Cory 
Eggleston. 

" Not exactly fiction, yet with some of the best qualities of fiction in that 
it has characters who are individualized and humor that is gentle and 
cheery . . . the unmistakable air of literary grace and refinement."— The 
Outlook. 

" Delightful appreciation of the poetic side of life and the fun which is 
the heritage of the courageous and patient." — The Congregationalist. 

"Thoroughly agreeable little book . . . one can figure it as keeping its 
place for many a year among beloved volumes, to be presented half a century 
hence to the attention of youth, with : 4 Ah, they don't write such books as 
that, nowadays.' "—The Living Age. 

J. A. SPENDER'S COMMENTS OF BAGSHOT 

By the editor of the Westminster Gazette. $1.25 net. 

" A whimsical, very interesting and, at the same time, very real, if imag- 
inary, character who, as bachelor, uncle, book lover, elderly civil servant 
and so on, is well worth the acquaintance of everybody, no matter how 
careful in the matter of making friends."—^. T. Evening Sun. 

" Thoughtful, pungent, and at times invested with a grave and subtle 
humor. . . . They promote thought . . . possesses peculiar and individual 
qualities which mark it as an unusual production . . . distinctly worth 
while."— Brooklyn Eagle. 

"Its general characteristics one might dare to say are sincerity and 
wisdom. It is genial without being cynical. It is serious without being 
solemn. It is liberal without being violent or impatient ... a witty, 
singularly modest, contained and gracious manner." — Chicago Evening Post. 

"While affording the easiest of reading, nevertheless touches deep issues 
deeply and fine issues finely. The author not only thinks himself, but 
makes you think. Whether Bagshot is dealing with death and immortality, 
or riches and socialism, he always contrives to be pungent and interesting 
and yet urbane, for there is no attempt in the book either at flashy cynicism 
or cheap epigram."— The Spectator (London). 



HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



"THE RETURN OF THE ESSAY" 

FABIAN FRANKLIN'S PEOPLE AND PROBLEMS 

By the Editor of The Baltimore News and Sometime Pro- 
fessor in Johns Hopkins University. $1.50 net. 

Dr. Franklin marks his retirement from the editorship of The 
Baltimore News, which he has held since 1895, by a collection of 
his ripest work. This includes comprehensive discussion of 
" Newspapers and Exact Thinking," " James Joseph Sylvester," 
" The Intellectual Powers of Woman," and " A Defect of Public 
Discussion in America," with some three-score editorials. 

" Mr. Franklin discussed political, economic, financial and social problems 
with knowledge and illuminating clarity ; the stage and literature both 
occupied part of his journalistic attention ; he discussed foreign affairs, 
especially those of the French nation, intelligently, and he wrote well- 
informed estimates of such diverse personalities as Grover Cleveland, Glad- 
stone, Thomas F. Bayard, Cecil Rhodes, M. S. Quay, Dr. Osier, Ibsen and 
Colonel Picquart, the defender of Dreyfus and now Minister of War."— Phila- 
delphia Press. 

" All upon subjects that were of more than passing consequence. Still 
good reading, and will not soon lose a certain permanent value of informed, 
level-headed, temperate and scholarly comment upon matters of moment 
in the National life."— N. 7. Times Review. 

MISS E. B. SHERMAN'S 
WORDS TO THE WISE— AND OTHERS 

In this new volume Miss Sherman discusses The Root and 
Foliage of Style — When Steel Strikes Punk — Our Kin and Others 
— Where the Veil is Thin — At the End of the Rainbow — Ruskin — 
Serendipity — Modern Letter Writing, with various actual 
examples — Our Comedie Humaine — The Slain that Are Not 
Numbered — A Plea for the Naturalization of Ghosts. $1.50 net. 

" Piquant reading . . . we can recommend the book." — Nation. 

" Distinguished by a family appeal, underlying tenderness and sparkle. 
To wide reading and sympathetic knowledge of human nature the author 
joins high ideals and a keen sense of humor . . . clever, graceful and sug- 
gestive writing. . . . Considered in connection with countless other excel- 
lent works of the crowded literary season it resembles ' an oasis green in 
deserts dry.' "—Chicago Record-Herald. 

"Brilliant essays, some of them deserving of a place among the best in 
English literature."— San Francisco Chronicle. 

" Such graces of mind, and heart, and pen as have made the charm and 
fame of a Montaigne, a Lamb, a Samuel Crothers, an Agnes Repplier." — 
Louisville Courier- Journal. 

MISS E. B. SHERMAN'S TAPER LIGHTS 

12mo, $1.25. 

"A marvelously brilliant collection of subtle and fascinating essays."— 
Boston Transcript. 

"The first satisfactory stopping place is the last page."— Springfield 
Republican. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY p ^ew S yoek 



JANE G. PERKINS'S 
THE LIFE OF THE HONOURABLE MRS. NORTON 

With portraits, 8vo. $3.50 net ; by mail, $3.68. 

Mrs. Norton was the great Sheridan's grand-daughter, 
beautiful and witty, the author of novels, poems and songs, 
contesting contemporary popularity with Mrs. Browning ; her 
influence was potent in politics ; Meredith undoubtedly had 
her in mind when he drew " Diana of the Crossways." 

" Reads like a novel . . . seems like the page from an old romance, and 
Miss Perkins has preserved all its romantic charm. . . . Miss Perkins has 
let letters, and letters unusually interesting, tell much of the story. . . . In- 
deed her biography has all the sustained interest of the novel, almost the 
irresistible march of fate of the Greek drama. It is eminently reliable."— 
Boston Transcript. 

" Brilliant, beautiful, unhappy, vehement Caroline Norton. . . . Her 
story is told here with sympathy, but yet fairly enough . . . interesting 
glimpses ... of the many men and women of note with whom Mrs. Norton 
was brought into more or less intimate association." —Providence Journal. 

" The generous space allowed her to tell her [own story in the form of 
intimate letters is a striking and admirable feature of the book."— The Dial. 

" She was an uncommonly interesting personage, and the memoir . . . 
has no dull spots and speedily wins its way to a welcome."— New York 
Tribune. 

" So exceptional and vivid a personality ... of unusual quality . . . very 
well written."— The Outlook. 



YUNG WING'S MY LIFE IN CHINA AND AMERICA 

With portrait, 8vo. $2.50 net ; by mail, $2.65. 

The author's account of his early life in China, his education at 
Yale, where he graduated in 1854 (LL.D., 1876), his return 
to China and adventures during the Taiping rebellion, his 
intimate association withTsang Kwoh Fan and Li Hung Chang, 
and finally his great work for the " Chinese Educational Move- 
ment " furnish highly interesting and good reading. 

" It is his native land that is always the great heroic character on the stage 
his mind surveys; and his mental grasp is as wide as his domiciliation. A 
great life of action and reflection and the experiences of two hemispheres. 
It is not so much a knowledge of isolated facts that is to be got from the 
book as an understanding of the character of the Chinese race.' '—Hartford 
Courant. 

" There is "not a dull line in this simply told but fascinating biography."— 
Literary Digest. 

" He has given Occidental readers an opportunity to behold the machinery 
of Chinese custom and the substance of Chinese character in action. No 
foreigner could possibly have written a work so instructive, and no un- 
travelled native could have made it intelligible to the West ... a most in- 
teresting story both in the telling and in the acting. . . . Mr. Yung presents 
each of his readers with a fragment of China herself."— Living Age. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



WIILLAM DE MORGAN'S IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 

The story of the great love of "Blind Jim" and his little girl, 
and of the affairs of a successful novelist. Fourth printing. 
$1.75. 

"William De Morgan at his very best."— Independent. 

"Another long delightful voyage with the best English company. The 
story of a child certainly not less appealing to our generation than Little 
Nell was to hers."— New York Times Saturday Review. 

WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S SOMEHOW GOOD 

The dramatic story of some modern English people in a 
strange situation. Fourth printing. $1.75. 

"A book as sound, as sweet, as wholesome, as wise, as any in the range of 
fiction."— The Nation. 

" Our older novelists (Dickens and Thackeray) will have to look to their 
laurels, for the new one is fast proving himself their equal. A higher quality 
of enjoyment than is derivable from the work of any other novelist now liv- 
ing and active in either England or America."— The Dial. 

WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S ALICE-FOR-SHORT 

The story of a London waif, a friendly artist, his friends and 
family. Seventh printing. $1.75. 

" Really worth reading and praising . . . will be hailed as a masterpiece. 
If any writer of the present era is read a half century hence, a quarter 
century, or even a decade, that writer is William De Morgan."— Boston 
Transcript. 

" It is the Victorian age itself that speaks in those rich, interesting, over- 
crowded books. . . . Will be remembered as Dickens's novels are 
remembered."— Springfield Republican. 

WILLIAM DE MORGAN'S JOSEPH VANCE 

A novel of life near London in the 50's. Tenth printing. 
$1.75. 

" The book of the last decade ; the best thing in fiction since Mr. Meredith 
and Mr. Hardy ; must take its place as the first great English novel that has 
appeared in the twentieth century."— Lewis Melville in New York Times 
Saturday Review. 

" If the reader likes both ' David Copperfield ' and ' Peter Ibbetson,' he 
can find the two books in this one."— The Independent. 

*** A twenty-four page illustrated leaflet about Mr. De Morgan, with 
complete reviews of his books, sent on request. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



RICHARD BURTON'S 
MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

A study of principles and personalities by the Professor 
of English Literature, University of Minnesota, author of 
"Literary Likings," "Forces in Fiction," "Kahab" (a 
Poetic Drama), etc. 12mo, 331 pp. and index. $1.25 
net. 

"Noteworthy American volume of literary criticism . . . a well-balanced, 
discerning and unhackneyed study . . . delightfully readable. . . . 
In his judgment of individual books and authors Mr. Burton is refreshingly 
sane and trustworthy ... an inspiring survey of the whole trend of 
fiction from Richardson to Howells, with a valuable intermediary chapter 
on Stendhal and the French realists, all presented in a style of genuine 
charm and rare flexibility . . . may be warranted to interest and inspire 
any serious lover of fiction."— Chicago Record-Herald. 

"Rare sympathy and scholarly understanding . . . book that should be 
read and re-read by every lover of the English novel."— Boston Transcript. 

RICHARD BURTON'S 
RAHAB, A DRAMA OF THE FALL OF JERICHO 

119 pp., 12mo. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.33. With cast of 

characters for the first performance and pictures of the 

scenes. 

" A poetic drama of high quality. Plenty of dramatic action." 
— New York Times Review. 

WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE'S 

THE GREATER ENGLISH POETS OF THE NINETEENTH 

CENTURY 

383 pp., large 12mo. $2.00 net; by mail, $2.15. Studies 
of Keats, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, 
Browning, Tennyson, Arnold, Bossetti, Morris, and Swin- 
burne. Their outlook upon life rather than their strictly 
literary achievement is kept mainly in view. 

" The sound and mellow fruits of his long career as a critic. . . . 
There is not a rash, trivial, or dull line in the whole book. . . . 
Its charming sanity has seduced me into reading it to the end, and 
anyone who does the same will feel that he has had an inspiring 
taste of everything that is finest in nineteenth-century poetry. 
Ought to be read and reread by every student of literature, and 
most of all by those who have neglected English poetry, for here 
one finds its essence in brief compass." — Chicago Record-Herald. 

If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will 
send, from time to time, information regarding their new books. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



By R. M. JOHNSTON 

Assistant Professor in Harvard University 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

A Short History. i2mo. 278 pp., with special bibliographies 
following each chapter, and index. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37. 

"An almost ideal book of its kind and within its scope ... a clear 
idea of the development and of the really significant men of events of that 
cardinal epoch in the history of France and Europe is conveyed to readers, 
many of whom will have been bewildered by the anecdotal fulness or the 
rhetorical romancing of Professor Johnston's most conspicuous predecessors." 
— Churchman. 

"Deserves to take rank as a little classic and as such to be given a place 
in all libraries. Not only is this admirably written, but it singles out the 
persons and events best worth understanding, viewing the great social up- 
heaval from a long perspective." — San Francisco Chronicle. 

NAPOLEON 

A Short Biography. i2mo. 248 pp., with special bibliographies 
following each chapter, and index. $1.25 net ; by mail, $1.37. 

"Scholarly, readable, and acute." — Nation. 

"It is difficult to speak with moderation of a work so pleasant to read, so 
lucid, so skillful." — Boston Transcript. 

"A quite admirable book."— London Spectator. 

"The style is clear, concise and readable." — London Athenceum. 

"In a small volume of less than 250 pages he gives us a valuable key to 
the history of the European Continent from the Reign of Terror to the 
present day. "—London Morning Post. 

LEADING AMERICAN SOLDIERS 

Biographies of Washington, Greene, Taylor, Scott, Andrew 
Jackson, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, McClellan, Meade, Lee, 
"Stonewall" Jackson, Joseph E. Johnston. With portraits. 1 vol. 
$1.75 net ; by mail $1.88. 

In the "Leading Americans" series. Prospectus of the series 
on request. 

"Performs a real service in preserving the essentials." — Review of 
Reviews. 

"Very interesting. . . . Much sound originality of treatment, and 
the style is clear." — Springfield Republican. 

***If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will send, from 
time to time, information regarding their new books. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



" The most complete and authoritative . . . pre-eminently the 
man to write the book . . . full of the spirit of discerning 
criticism. . . . Delightfully engaging manner, with humor, 
allusiveness and an abundance of the personal note." — Richard Aid- 
rich in New York Times Review. (Complete notice On application. ) 

CHAPTERS OF OPERA 

Being historical and critical observations and records concerning 
the Lyric Drama in New York from its earliest days down to the 
present time. 

By Henry Edward Krehbiel 

Musical critic of the New York Tribune, Author of "Music and 
Manners in the Classical Period," "Studies in the Wagnerian 
Drama," " How to Listen to Music," etc. With over 70 portraits 
and pictures of Opera Houses. Second edition, revised. 

$3.50 net ; by mail $3.72. Illustrated circular on application. 

This is perhaps Mr. Krehbiel's most important book. The 
first seven chapters deal with the earliest operatic performances in 
New York. Then follows a brilliant account of the first quarter- 
century of the Metropolitan, 1883-1908. He tells how Abbey's first 
disastrous Italian season was followed by seven seasons of German 
Opera under Leopold Damrosch and Stanton, how this was tem- 
porarily eclipsed by French and Italian, and then returned to dwell 
with them in harmony, thanks to Walter Damrosch's brilliant crusade, 
— also of the burning of the opera house, the vicissitudes of the 
American Opera Company, the coming and passing of Grau and 
Conried, and finally the opening of Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan 
Opera House and the first two seasons therein, 1906-08. 

" Presented not only in a readable manner but without bias . . . ex- 
tremely interesting and valuable." — Nation. 

" The illustrations are a true embellishment . . . Mr. Krehbiel's style 
was never more charming-. It is a delight." — Philip Hale in Boston Herald. 

" A readable and valuable book, which no one who fe is interested in the 
subject can afford to leave out of his library . . . written in entertaining 
manner, and it is comprehensive." — Putnam. 

"Invaluable for purpose of reference . . . rich in critical passages . . . 
all the great singers of the world have been heard here. Most of the preat 
conductors have come to our shores. . . . Memories of them which serve 
to humanize, as it were, his analyses of their work."— New York Tribune. 

+ *„.If the reader will send his name and address, the publisher will send, from 
time to time, information regarding their new books. 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

EUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



THE THEORY OF THE THEATRE 

And Other Principles of Dramatic Criticism 

By Clayton Hamilton. Author of " Materials and Methods 
of Fiction." $1.50 net; by mail, $1.60. 

CONTENTS : 

The Theory of the Theatre. — What is a Play? — The Psychology 
of Theatre Audiences. — The Actor and the Dramatist. — Stage Con- 
ventions in Modern Times. — Economy of Attention in Theatrical Per- 
formances. — Emphasis in the Drama. — The Four Leading Types of 
Drama: Tragedy and Melodrama; Comedy and Farce. — The Modern 
Social Drama. 

Other Principles of Dramatic Criticism. — The Public and the 
Dramatist. — Dramatic Art and the Theatre Business. — The Happy End- 
ings in the Theatre. — The Boundaries of Approbation. — Imitation and 
Suggestion in the Drama. — Holding the Mirror up to Nature. — Blank 
Verse on the Contemporary Stage. — Dramatic Literature and Theatric 
Journalism. — The Intention of Performance. — The Quality of New 
Endeavor. — The Effect of Plays upon the Public. — Pleasant and Un- 
pleasant Plays. — Themes in the Theatre. — The Function of Imagination. 

DRAMATISTS OF TO-DAY 

Rostand, Hauptmann, Sudermann, 
Pinero, Shaw, Phillips, Maeterlinck 

By Prof. Edward Everett Hale, Jr., of Union College. With 
gilt top, $1.50 net. (By mail, $1.60.) 

An informal discussion of their principal plays and of the perform- 
ances of some of them. The volume opens with a paper " On Stand- 
ards of Criticism," and concludes with " Our Idea of Tragedy," and 
an appendix of all the plays of each author, with dates of their first 
performance or publication. 

New York Evening Post : " It is not often nowadays that a theat- 
rical book can be met with so free from gush and mere eulogy, or so 
weighted by common sense ... an excellent chronological appendix 
and full index . . . uncommonly useful for reference." 

Dial: "Noteworthy example of literary criticism in one of the 
most interesting of literary fields. . . . Well worth reading a second 
time." 

THE GERMAN DRAMA OF THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY 

By Georg Witkowski. Translated by Prof. L. E. Horning. 
i2tno. $1.00. 

Kleist, Grillparzer, Hebbel, Ludwig, Wildenbruch, Sudermann, Haupt- 
mann, and minor dramatists receive attention. 

New York Times Review: " The translation of this brief, clear, and 
logical account was an extremely happy idea. Nothing at the same time 
so comprehensive and terse has appeared on the subject, and it is a 
subject of increasing interest to the English-speaking public." 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



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